Mark in Mexico has posted an entry which I definitely believe is worthy of your attention, “The last word on Mexico”. This lengthy post has two sections. The first section is a concise political history of Mexico from 1820 to the present. It will probably be an eye-opener for you.
The second section is Mark’s prescription for solving Mexico’s problems. The short version of this is completely sealing off our southern border, allowing completely open immigration into the United States from Mexico, and forced assimilation.
I can only imagine what the reaction of Mexicans to Mark’s plan would be. But his plan is a political non-starter in the United States if for no other reason but for the five most important letters in American politics: NIMBY (not in my back yard). A few of the particularly troublesome areas:
“We set up refugee stations in all the major cities of the United States.”
The U. S. government does not have this power. Moreover, I doubt it would be a popular move.
“We begin building government subsidized housing, with some brains this time, in those cities to house the refugees and get them out of the refugee centers as rapidly as possible. This government housing will be designed and built to scatter the refugees to all parts of their new homes.”
I wonder where the money to do this will come from? Especially while we’re building and maintaining the border he’s suggested.
“The incoming refugees must sign an agreement to master the English language to a to-be-established government standard at government run schools in their new homes within 2 years maximum. ”
For this to pass Constitutional muster we’d probably need to amend the Constitution to make English the national language. I can’t imagine this happening with the current state of things here. To give you some idea of what I mean, voting instructions in the city of Chicago are currently printed (at taxpayer expense) in more than fifty languages.
There’s lots more.
Would the militarization and control of our southern border be a politically popular move here? My guess is that it would probably be 55-45—not overwhelming. It may become necessary for reasons like those with which Mark concludes:
“Let me add one final note. The Muslims are here. They are up in the mountains converting one individual, one family, one village, one congregation at a time. They are in the poorest of the inner city ghettos, again converting one individual, one family, one congregation at a time. There are about 90 million Mexicans today. If the Muslims convert 10% of them, and can turn 1% of those converts into jihadists, that’s 90,000 bloodthirsty jihadist killers clamoring at our back door. 90,000 potential murderers of our innocent men, women and children probing at our border defenses, such as they are, by land, air and sea, 24/7. Think about that a little before you dismiss the aforementioned too quickly.”
While Muslim converts in Mexico don’t concern me per se a lot of the money behind such missionary activity is bound to be Saudi Wahabist money and that does concern me.
As I’ve noted before I think that ultimate federation with Mexico (and Canada) is inevitable and desireable. I think that union with Canada would be easier to accomplish and probably be a prerequisite for a North American union. The most important reason for this is our legal systems are closer.
Mark obviously knows a heckuva lot more about Mexico than I do but I doubt that mercy alone will move Americans to open immigration from Mexico. Such immigration must be seen to be of value to average Americans. I’d like to see the case made on net.
While I think that ever-tighter border controls on our border with Mexico are inevitable, I also think that the amelioration of conditions there should be in the form of removing the push factors that promote Mexico immigration into the United States rather than creating new pull factors. Mexico is no longer a poor, backwards country. It’s a middle-class country with a lot of poor people in it. Our government should be motivating the Mexican government to make the lives of Mexicans in Mexico better rather than forcing their citizens out of the country to send remittances home (those remittances are becoming Mexico’s biggest industry).
Both carrots and sticks should be used to this end. And the biggest stick we have is those very remittances. When President Bush talks about a guest worker system with Presidente Fox, he should also be talking about economic liberalization in Mexico, banking reform, land reform, more education there, getting control of environmental degradation in Mexico, and the possibility of taxing cash that goes out of the United States.
Excellent post. Thanks!