Mexico, NAFTA, and Immigration

These are not separate issues. The massive presence of illegal immigrants in the US is created by the wealth differential. This creates an economic incentive for people to enter the country illegally which creates a large number of such immigrants. NAFTA was supposed to help alleviate this wealth differential by stimulating the economy of Mexico and other nations, creating more jobs, and thus providing employment at home for people who would otherwise immigrate to the US illegally. Many feel that the effect of NAFTA was not to begin eliminating the wealth differential by raising the standard of living of Mexicans, instead it was to begin eliminating the wealth differential by lowering the incomes of regular Americans. If most Americans become as poor as most Mexicans, there will no longer be any reason for Mexicans to immigrate to the US.

Another solution frequently proposed to the immigration problem is to close the border. Usually this is accompanied with the idea that we should use the US Army to close the border. After all, we already have these troops on hand, might as well use them for something. This is a very simple minded and short sighted position. The immigration problem is caused by the wealth differential. Putting the Army on the border will not eliminate the wealth differential. As soon as you take the Army off the border to do something else, the problem will return. In order for this to be a permanent solution to the problem you would have to permanently commit the Army to this mission. However many Corps and Divisions are found to be needed to close the border would have to be permanently committed to that mission. Since they would no longer be available for any other missions around the world, it would become necessary to increase the size of the standing Army to provide that number of Corps and Divisions to do other things. In order to use the Army to provide a permanent solution to the problem you would have to create an Army force in addition to what we already have large enough to do this. Since the only way to use the Army to permanently close the border is to create a permanent force in addition to the current military sufficiently large to close the border and dedicated to that mission, why use the Army at all? Why not just expand the Border Patrol?

There is a difference between military and police missions. The police must treat people differently than the military. The people coming across the border are not using tanks, mortars, howitzers, aircraft bombing our cities, assault weapons, hand grenades, and the other accoutrements of warfare. They are unarmed and desperate civilians. The mission to stop them is essentially a police mission not a military mission. The Army is not the proper tool for the job. Using the Army for the mission would do two things. It would prevent the Army from training properly to fight wars, which is what it is for, thus making the Army less effective and able. The Army Corps and Divisions dedicated to this mission would have to change their training and operating procedures to suit the new mission. They would cease to be a military force and would become a police force. They could not do their job properly unless they changed to meet the different challenges of the new job. In the end, if the Army were used to close the borders, they would cease to be an Army and become a police force. No other outcome is possible. In the real world you cannot use the Army to close the borders, it will only change the Army into something else. In the end, the ‘Army’ used to close the border would cease to be Army and become a larger Border Patrol.

If you want to close the borders, the only way it can actually be done is to create a dedicated force large enough, and with sufficient resources to do that on a permanent basis. This means increasing the size of the Border Patrol.

This solution will almost certainly never be implemented. The reason that it will never be implemented is that it requires a commitment on the part of the people of the US to this mission which they will never make. Such a commitment requires a clear and permanent majority of US citizens who believe that this is the right thing to do. That does not exist. Many Americans point to the proud history of immigrants building this country. They find it difficult to support such an exclusionary policy considering that history. Many other Americans use the labor provided by the illegal immigrants and will lobby and pressure to prevent this from being done. People of Hispanic descent are a very large minority presence in the US and their voice on this issue will be heard in the halls of Washington. All of these internal dissensions on this issue mean that the permanent majority needed to permanently close the borders does not and will not exist in the foreseeable future.

A third solution to the problem proposed is a legal immigrant worker policy. Under such a policy these immigrant workers could enter the country legally. Such a policy would allow us to have some oversight in the process and increase our national security by giving us greater control over who is entering the country. The problem with this is that it is NAFTA in another suit of clothes. Under this program you import the cheap labor from Mexico to compete with US workers in this country instead of exporting jobs from the US to the cheap labor in Mexico. The problem with this is that a market society depends on the existence of a market. The workers are the market, and if you reduce them all in their real wages and purchasing ability you reduce or destroy your market and destroy the real wealth and productive capacity of society in the long run. In economic terms ‘cheap’ labor is very expensive in its long term effects on a national economy. Nonetheless, some program like this is inevitable and better than the current system. Laws against this immigration movement are going to continue to be unenforceable in the future as they have been in the past. Making unenforceable laws only creates a huge illegal economy which thrives on what has been made illegal. This huge illegal economy provides an opening in our National Security which can be exploited by our enemies. Only by legalizing and regulating things which cannot realistically be made illegal can we bring these situations under any semblance of control.

In the long run the only solution to this problem is to reduce the pressures driving people to come to the US for jobs and driving certain elements in the US to desire to use cheap labor from Mexico instead of American Citizens. Both of these solutions imply taking measures to reduce the economic differences between the US and Mexico. It is these economic differences which create the problem to begin with.

One of the possible solutions to this problem is to bring Mexico closer to the US in terms of minimum wage laws and environmental regulations. If Mexico did not offer the opportunity to evade such regulations it would not be so attractive to those exporting jobs to Mexico. One of the great weaknesses of NAFTA is that it did nothing to bring the US and Mexico onto a similar level in these areas while removing the trade barriers between the countries. Treaties like NAFTA should include clauses standardizing business costs and policies which effect the competitive ability of businesses in the two countries.

Another more radical solution to this problem is to remember that the US is a federation of United States. Only 13 of its states were there at the beginning. All the rest joined at later stages in its history. There is no reason that more cannot join in the future. The US and Mexico are so close geographically and so closely tied economically that inviting the member states of Mexico to become states in the US is a natural and logical development. If each of the states of Mexico were to become states in the US, then the southern border of the US would be much shorter and more easily policed than it currently is. As states of the US they would be subject to similar regulation under Federal environmental and labor laws. They would gradually but relatively rapidly conform to those standards and the problem which currently exists would disappear.

In the long run, it is likely that such a unification in one form or another, under one name or another is likely. NAFTA was a step in that general direction. While it is probably unlikely to command much instantaneous acceptance, it is an idea whose time is likely coming.