Thread: Mexicans long for U.S. -- and a future

www.mercurynews.com

Posted on Sun, Aug. 28, 2005
Mexicans long for U.S. -- and a future

WITHOUT DEEP REFORMS, THOSE SEEKING PROSPERITY HAVE NO REASON TO STAY

By Denise Dresser


Mexico is becoming a country of people who don't want to live there anymore. It is a place where four of every 10 adults say they would migrate to the United States if they had the means and the opportunity. More and more Mexicans are dreaming in English, longing for a better life, hoping that a trek across the border would provide them with what they can't get south of it: economic opportunity, social mobility, effective citizenship and the rights it entails. While Mexico stagnates, its people don't want to.

It's no surprise that the governors of Arizona and New Mexico have declared a state of emergency to address the law enforcement problems created by a growing influx of immigrants. By the hundreds of thousands each year, Mexicans are packing their bags, paying a pollero, running across the desert and frequently dying in their attempt to do so.

As a recent Pew Hispanic Center study reveals, the desire to migrate -- even illegally -- is present in all sectors of Mexican society, from the well-educated to the poor. Mexicans from all walks of life want to leave because there are fewer incentives to stay.

Mexico today is a paralyzed, dysfunctional democracy that has failed to ensure broad prosperity for its people. Five years ago, the nation was filled with hope. President Vicente Fox, who ended seven decades of authoritarian rule, was swept into office on the crest of high expectations, including promises of 7 percent annual economic growth and the end of corruption associated with the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).

Those expectations have been dashed. Trapped since the beginning of his term by a divided Congress in which his party doesn't have a majority, the president's ambitious agenda for change has stalled. Structural and institutional reforms that Mexico desperately needs to promote growth and employment have been postponed indefinitely, and Fox is viewed as an ineffectual leader who was unable to take advantage of a historic opportunity.

Mexico isn't on the verge of an economic meltdown. Indeed, one of Fox's accomplishments has been the maintenance of the country's fiscal discipline and the macroeconomic stability that provides. But that isn't enough to propel people from a tortilla factory to a software company, to create a broad middle class and thus to guarantee social mobility.

Moreover, another potential driver of change, the North American Free Trade Agreement that went into effect 11 years ago, also has fallen short. Although NAFTA has helped boost Mexico's manufacturing sector, that hasn't been enough to fuel overall economic growth beyond 3 percent to 4 percent a year, or to stave off growing competition for manufacturing jobs from India and China.

What's more, while Mexico is still largely stable -- free of the civil strife that plagues Latin American countries such as Bolivia and Colombia -- increasing border violence linked to the drug trade has tarnished the country's image and led to tense relations with the United States.

Difficult election

Mexico is at a stalemate -- and the next presidential election, in July 2006, probably will not break it. Mexico will face a troublesome choice: the return of the PRI and its corrupt practices, or the empowerment of a left-leaning, charismatic figure -- Andrés Manuel López Obrador -- who favors patronage-driven politics and has no clear strategy for creating a dynamic, modern economy.

Democracy in Mexico may be working well enough in terms of free and fair elections, but it is unable to deliver economic opportunity for its people. Something else is malfunctioning, and it transcends Fox or whoever follows him.

It has to do with a deep, historic, structural reality: Mexico's dysfunctional democracy is the result of a pattern of political and economic behavior that condemns the country to muddling through instead of racing ahead, independently of who gets elected.

Here's the problem: Government after government has sustained a model that places more value on the extraction of resources -- such as oil -- than on the education and empowerment of people. Given that the government gets the revenues it needs -- or thinks it needs -- by selling oil, it doesn't really need to collect taxes.

However, governments that don't broaden their tax base have few incentives to respond to the needs of their people. And so they don't. Instead they tread down the path of crony capitalism, of postponed or partial structural reforms, of privatizations that benefit elites but hurt consumers.

Although Mexico is more democratic than it was 10 years ago, it also is more unequal. Broad swaths of the population -- 28.5 percent -- don't finish high school. Forty percent of the population still lives below the poverty line. And the old elites remain, locked inside their gated communities, fending off the poor, whom they have no incentive to empower, because plentiful, cheap labor is so beneficial to those who employ it.

More worrisome for the long term is that governments that work this way live on borrowed time. Natural resources like oil can't support countries indefinitely. And more fundamentally, these governments produce skin-deep democracies in which people have a vote but don't really have a stake. They create clients instead of citizens, recipients instead of participants. They create people who live with their hands held out instead of their heads held high.

Even those who do dream of succeeding in Mexico often find the door locked. There are too many barriers to the poor, the innovative, and those without access to credit -- too many walls erected against social mobility.

Bleak prospects

None of the contenders for the Mexican presidency has made a commitment to changing this system. Mexicans instead are promised a lot of public works -- bridges, highways and massive structures designed to elicit short-term political support -- but not an investment in the people themselves.

Although Mexicans will be able to vote next year in a more democratic environment, it will be increasingly difficult for them to compete in a globalized world. Mexicans will face a future in which standards of living continue to fall, incomes continue to stagnate and hopes are dampened. So they will keep voting with their feet.

Thus the brain drain of the professional class, the self-imposed exile of those who would prefer to stay but are compelled to leave, the perilous journey north of people determined to work hard and move up. Migration flows will continue, and Mexico will remain a country where one of every five male citizens from age 26 to 35 lives in the United States.

Added to that, bills introduced in the U.S. Congress this summer reflect the need to address Americans' concerns about immigration, including the challenge created by an estimated 11 million people who already live in the United States without authorization.

The recent Pew Hispanic Center poll reveals that many Mexicans would be willing to participate in a temporary guest-worker program that might lessen illegal immigration. This idea was pursued vigorously by Fox back in 2001 but went nowhere after Sept. 11, when the Bush administration's attention shifted to the war on terror. As Congress revisits immigration reform, it should seek long-term solutions to the problem, not just a quick fix.

To break the cycle of misery that propels Mexicans to migrate, key reforms will be needed in Mexico: reforms that empower citizens, create effective processes for decision-making and power-sharing in a divided government and dismantle the bottlenecks in the economy that inhibit competitiveness, innovation and growth. Without these changes, Mexico will continue to limp sideways instead of running forward.

Mexican illegals should look to Mexico for their future, not us. Fix your own damn country and stay out of ours.