TRANSLATED FROM:
http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/prensa/?contenido=33742

REGARDING IMMIGRATION

In the first place, I do not want to be a President that likes to see its people leave the country, because all the migrant, each migrant that leaves Mexico is a loss, a family without father, a son without a good father. In some small villages of Mexico we can see single women with their children.

I do not enjoy migration. Nevertheless, we should understand with clarity the nature of this phenomenon.

I expect that this can be one your studies, especially in the economic field, but is a matter of something as a textbook example: They're two economies, one intensive in capital, that is to say, the American economy, while the other is intensive in labor, that is to say, the Mexican economy. We have three thousand kilometers of border, we are part of the same region of the world and, therefore, we have two complementary economies. It is impossible to stop that phenomenon.

Consequently, I am not trying to place people there, but I am fighting arduously by preserving the opportunities for my people in Mexico. My duty is to create opportunities of employment for the Mexicans in Mexico. And, instead of seeing my people crossing the border to seek capital in the United States, I am working and I am working very arduously in order to attract that capital towards Mexico.



Now well, the American economy is suffering. Nevertheless, if you are of the idea that the solution for this situation, in other words, the solution of the lack of competitiveness of the American economy, is to close the borders, you are making a very, very serious mistake.

On the other hand, I am also convinced that human beings have human rights, independently of their migratory condition. A human Being is a human Being. Of course, I recognize the right of all countries to enforce the law in their own territory. Nevertheless, this is something completely different to not respect human rights.

In relation to people that emigrate to Mexico, we are beginning a new policy. I have just met with the new president of Guatemala and we said that we were going to make our border become one of opportunities.

I am convinced that the central american workers offer benefits to the Mexican people. Likewise, I am convinced that the Mexicans offer benefits for the American workers. You can find this investigation in the Counsel of Economic Advisors of the White House.

This investigation indicates that migrants are absolutely complementary for the native workers of this country and each year they are enlarging the income of the Americans by 30 Billion dollars. In second place, the idea exists that is very costly to have migrants in this country. Nevertheless, the investigation indicates that the net present value in the fiscal relation, that is to say, the difference between the taxes that the migrants pay and the services that they receive, is a net profit for the American taxpayers of 80 thousand dollars by migrant.

REGARDING NAFTA

Well, we have problems at this moment. This morning I was in the Federal Reserve and, at any rate, what I should say is that we depend enough on the American economy, therefore 84 or 85 percent of our exports are given through NAFTA.

Consequently, what I am accustomed to tell people is that we have problems in a motor and therefore we need to start the other motor. That is to say, if the American economy is not moving, we need to export to other parts of the world. For example, exports to Europe last year grew more than 30 percent, at the same time the exports to other Latin-American countries grew 25 percent and the same thing the exports to Asia, as well as to other parts of the world.

In second place, one needs to fortify the internal market and that is why I am giving it a lot of attention to a very important tool which is infrastructure, because it can create jobs in different regions of the country, as well as to enlarge the demand through the public expense but, in the same way, there are many investments everywhere that are seeking places where to invest. Likewise, there are many mutual funds that are seeking long-term investments and the best long-term investment is infrastructure.

In third place, we also are working in the housing market, with more than one million annual loans for mortgages and this is another source of growth for our country. On the other hand, we also are supporting the agricultural sector and in Mexico the agriculture grew more than the average of the economy.