Friday, February 09, 2007

¡Sí! Mexico! Yes! Part One

I rattled at least one person with my first post highlighting my desire for expansionism. I've never been called a neocon or neocon-like in my whole life, but I found it more amusing than anything. Back in SoNM I'd been called a bleeding heart liberal in LC. Those of you that knew me in Los Alamos would find that...amusing too. I am, frankly, neither. I prefer to look at things one issue at a time and think it through. I've found that most issues are not reducible into sound bites. Most things worth your time in politics need to be examined and pondered. I am going to try to make arguments here in favour of annexing Mexico - or rather have Mexico join the Union. The issues are large, and complex. I believe it is worth your time to put aside your immediate reactions and consider the possibility and implications of adding 30+ Mexican states and to the Union.

There is a very good reason to unite the countries. The people of Mexico are coming here anyways. No matter what we do, there has been and will be a flood of immigrants from our southern neighbor. Many sources put the number of illegal immgrants coming across the Mexican border in the one million per year. The flood is quite high, but the thing is there are already a large number of people here already taht are illegal. That number varies depending on who is doing the telling and what their agenda is. Some put it as high as 20 million. The most realistic number I have come across seems to be in the 14 million range (+/-).

A recent, as in August 2005, Pew Hispanic Center survey conducted in Mexico found that 46% of adults in Mexico would move to the US if they had the chance. 21% would be willing to move here even if they were forced to come and live here illegally. This is almost 33 million people and 15 million people respectively, assuming an adult population of 70 million at the time of the survey. If this were to hold true for the whole population of 107 million people of today that would be almost 50 million and 22.5 million people respectively. Clearly this is a problem that must be address one way or another.

The mainstream thought process has been to beef up the border and hunt the illegal immigrants internal to the US. The government has been passing laws to add national guardmen to the border, increase the number of border patrol agents, build a wall along the border with Mexico, etc. On the other hand, there have been increased sweeps internal to the US for illegals. The Democrats have been talking about prosecuting the companies that hire illegals (yeah!).

However, the fact of the matter is even with all this, you can still go down to the Home Depots and get illegal workers and the temptation is very great with the fact that the union paid construction guys are around $40 - $50/hour here in California (according to the Ghiloti guy I just talked to a few weeks ago wrt to the house quest). Additionally, that the amount of people crossing into the country - that million person figure - happens to be those that the border patrol is not catching. They're catching a lot to be sure, but even with their efforts, the number of people coming across that vast border is immense. As for the wall? There have been 40 tunnels already found under the US borders. Most of them have been down along the Mexican border. Unless you're going to sink that wall down with a foundation 100+ ft underground, and get the associated cost, those tunnels are going to sprout up like mushrooms. Finally, let's start talking about the cost of that wall: it's been estimated at $7.5 billion to run the whole length of the border. Ever known a US construction government project to come in underbudget these days? How long would it take? Based on my own experiences, I could oh-so-easily see it mushroom to being ten times that in cost. $75 billion. For a wall that won't even stop those illegals.

The other approach, to boost the economy of Mexico until the inequality in econimes is decreased enough to greatly reduce the influx of immigrants, hasn't been working terribly well either. One of the ideas behind NAFTA was that Mexico's economy would be greatly boosted. It has been. It has been greatly enhanced by the free trade agreement. The immigration has simply grown despite the economic growth that Mexico has been experiencing. The disparity between the US and Mexico is simply too great and the people are simply jumping ship. The number of jobs that the US has to offer vs Mexico is too great. Even the 'unskilled' jobs.

There's been talk of a 'Marshall Plan' for Mexico. The idea is that we loan money to Mexico, at little or no interest and then probably not collect on that loan. The problem is that we wouldn't get that much out of it other than, perhaps, good will and, maybe, an improved Mexican economy: check out the criticism at the bottom of the wikipedia article, btw. It's probably a politically nonstarter here in the States. Pour tens of billions of dollars, possibly per year, into Mexico just so they won't come here? hm.

So where does that leave us? The 'traditonal' and alternate methods are not working. There is one last way, short of annexation, to 'fix' the problem: to simply open the border. Vincente Fox wanted this. I am unsure about Calderon, but, to be sure, I doubt his position would have changed that much. It would allow for that surplus labor to just go away. Yet, all it does is give us workers, hard workers, but still with an unsecured border. A border where if things went south economically because of the election of, say, a Chavezista, we'd be pretty screwed still.

That leaves annexation. We get the people that are hard workers. We get the land. We get a border that is much easier to secure: the border with Guatemala and Belize is far, far smaller than the one between the US and Mexico. And then we could go through and put through the reforms and pour that same money that would have gone through with a 'Marshal Plan'. The Mexicans get the rights of American citizens. They would have the right to move anywhere in the States they wished. They have the monetary power and stability of the US economy working to expand and enhance their terrtitories (with the treaty stated an exact date for the end of transition to when they'd become states). When their states transitioned from territories to full states, they'd wield a very large influence in Congress: 60+ Senators alone. There are more reasons, political, economic, demographic, and security related, but they'll be saved for another post.

More of the benefits need to be expounded on, to be sure, but time is not on my side today. I do believe that since the alternatives have been failing, the fact that Americans are going to unwilling to bail out Mexico monetarily, and throwing open the border would not help that much at all, that annexation ought to be seriously and deeply considered. The benefits are there for both sides, not just the Americans; not just the Mexicans. This would strengthen us both. Since I am proposing it, let me demonstrate over the next posts in this theme what these are.

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