Can't secure the borders? Move them!When I first saw the Annex Mexico to the United States idea in bloggerland, I have to admit my gut-reaction was, "won't that get us another 100 million workers coming after the US jobs American would do if they were ever offered legally through their local unemployment offices?" But, after a little thought (very little), I find the idea intriguing. Anything that might solve the border problem between our two countries that "our representatives" managed to get stirred into a frenzy is worth considering.
Arguments for annexation --
The Annex Mexico arguments (Sean Sanity, ChronWatch, and a bunch more) are as follows:
1. The Mexicans now in the US want to stay here and do the US "jobs Americans won't do" and an education (in Spanish) for their children to learn the jobs Americans will do and all the rights and privileges of US citizenship including voting rights.
2. The Mexicans in Mexico want the right to come and go across the US/Mexico border to get US jobs anytime they want and all the rights and privileges of US citizenship including voting rights while they're here.
3. Some of the Mexican national illegally here have US born children and, for reasons never explained, don't want to take their children back home with them (as US citizens and the citizens of other countries do with their foreign-born children) when their work visas expire or their illegal entry is discovered.
4. Governments on both sides of the border are in favor of an open flow of Mexicans across the US border, primarily because it's good for the corporate (campaign contributor) earnings and, although not so good for the US labor force, good for campaign contribution hungry politicians.
5. Mexico has OIL! WE NEED OIL!
6. If we don't secure Mexico's natural resources quickly, China will.
7. What's more open than no border at all?
8. Nothing else we've tried (loans, NAFTA, past amnesty) has solved Mexico's economic woes.
9. If Mexico insists on giving the US all its poor and downtrodden, and our politicians insists on taking them, lets insists on getting something in trade -- all of Mexico's land area that could support the Mexican people if the land were under the umbrella of US laws and economic development.
10. Let's give Mexico's citizens what they so loudly proclaim they want -- US citizenship -- by adding Mexico's 31 states (and 1 federal district) to the US's current 50 and create one big happy supersized, English-speaking-singing United States of America!
In other words, since our US government can't, or won't, secure the border, move the border. Annex Mexico! A little legislation. A little voting. Viva America! Pass the Sangria!
While there are a few (many) holes in these arguments, the Annex Mexico idea does have its upsides -- poetic and historical justice for a start. Historically, this is the way nations deal with a pesky neighbor. Sometimes the pesky neighbor wants to fight about it; sometimes they don't. I doubt this will be one of those fighting times. After all, this is just another free-trade business deal, akin to the formation of the European Union. Since it's a business deal, let's call it the Mexico Merger -- to appeal to those multinational corporate campaign donors out there for whichever party first grabs hold of this platform.
The upsides?
It seems to have a better chance to strengthen the economies of both the US and Mexico and cure the "undocumented alien problem" than anything else on the table. Compared to NAFTA as a solution to Mexico's economic woes, or guest worker amnesty as a solution to Homeland Security's negligence in controlling our land or sea to shining sea borders, or all the amnesty options on the table, it actually has the potential to be the solution.
Plus, we don't have to go to war (like we did in the 1840s) to make it happen. The Mexican government is all for an open border. Mexican nationals on both sides of the border are begging for the rights of US citizenship. Isn't that what the strong cries for amnesty and guest workers status is all about -- creating an expedited path to US citizenship and the American dream for the citizens of Mexico. We can do that just as easily by annexing Mexico as by granting "guest worker" status.
Economy building?
NAFTA is a failure -- the proof is in the 12 million Mexicans now here and the great majority of remaining Mexicans in Mexico who say they will come just as soon as they can. Economic studies show that even with heavy US investment in NAFTA, Mexico has failed to achieve any net improvement in private sector jobs.
Thanks to NAFTA, Mexicans live in crime-infested border towns, and our manufacturing and high-tech workers -- the US middle class taxpayers -- have lost their formerly well-paying family-feeding-educating factory jobs to an illegal workforce here. The Economic Policy Council found that by the Year 2000 (six years ago), NAFTA had cost the US almost 800,000 jobs and stagnant wages for millions of US workers.
Jobs losses on the US side of the border moved with sonic speed during the Bush administration when the remaining "jobs Americans no longer have an opportunity to do" in manufacturing and in high-tech began flying offshore to "trading partners" India and China as well.
NAFTA is as bad an idea as all the other free-trade/global-economy schemes the current administration clings to -- schemes that continue to destroy the wage base of US workers -- legal and illegal. Under the "guest worker" idea, workers on both sides of the border will continue to be exploited.
NAFTA really needs to go. Since nature abhords a vacuum, I'm told, let's stick something else in place, something bigger and better than NAFTA. The most humane something is to welcome the 12 million of Mexico's poor and downtrodden masses already here -- the ones that didn't realize any economic benefit from NAFTA and were forced to flee their homeland to feed their families -- into this land of opportunity in such a way that we might eventually have the means to support all 12 million of them and the 100 million plus of their families still in Mexico in years to come. The only sure way to make the lives of the Mexican people better is to welcome all the lands of Mexico along with the Mexican people into the United States and get busy making their world (and ours) safe for democracy and economic development.
Guest workers?
The Mexican government's current and future economic policy is predicated not on opening its borders to free-trade but on more and more Mexican nationals coming to the US as "guest workers" and sending money earned here home to support their families still there. In other words, the Mexican government has no plans to make life better for Mexicans in Mexico. Mexico's immigration policy is one of the most restrictive of US "trading partners." Those restrictions extend to all other areas of economic development in Mexico. That's the real problem, and that's the problem we should be solving in our own national interest and not in the Mexican state's national interest.
The Bush administration's current "guest worker" plan does nothing to solve Mexico's basic problem -- present and future lack of family-supporting jobs in Mexico for the Mexican people. The administration's plan encourages exploitation of workers on both sides of the border, while doing nothing to increase the future growth of the Mexican economy.
Plus, we nation of immigrants argue, it isn't fair to the rest of the world's poor and unemployed now waiting in line to legally claim the "jobs Americans won't do" to move the 12 million illegal Mexicans to the head of the line. If we want to be kind to illegals from Mexico, why not be kind to illegals from other points on the globe? If we want to discard immigration laws for this one group, why not discard them for all?
Homeland security?
The Mexican government is all for their poor and unemployed moving to the head of the US immigration line, however they're not so up with the idea of other people coming through their borders. The Mexican government is fine with the US having an open border, but illegal entry and unlawful presence in Mexico is a criminal offense.
The Mexican government does a much better job of homeland security than the US government does. Only people of documented good character bringing their own source of income with them are allowed to immigrate into Mexico; if a US citizen enters Mexico illegally, they get two years in a Mexican jail for a start.
If we're after homeland security, and that has been Bush mantra for the past 5 years, perhaps we should change our immigration laws, so they are as fair to Mexico's citizens who have broken our immigration laws as the Mexican government is to US citizens who break their immigration laws. If we're not going to be fair or even smart about homeland security, or if this homeland security thing was all just another deception, let's at least get something in the trade.
If you are good with abandoning the whole idea of homeland security for the theories that 1) free-trade is good for an economy, 2) the United States is better off for allowing Mexican nationals to come through wide-open borders, 3) you can't send 12 million people back to their home country -- although they might go home on their own if we arrested employers who hire them in open violation of existing US immigration laws, and 4) you can't control your borders, as President Bush argues -- although there is proof to the contrary that our immigration control people can do their jobs at least one or two days out of the year, then you ought to agree that no border at all and unrestricted enconomic development between the combined states of Mexico and the US will be even better for both Mexico and the United States.
Besides, if we Annex Mexico, we can have Mexico's help with border control and in hurricane response anytime we need it, doing homeland security jobs Americans won't do (when FEMA sole-source contractors insist on giving those jobs to illegals).
Spread democracy?
The massive influx of Mexican nationals into the US is proof of more than a failed NAFTA; it is proof of a failed Mexican government. The Mexican government wants to partake of the global economy by sending their poor and jobless (and their criminals ) to the United States. The Mexican nationals illegally in the US are taking to our streets and demanding the rights of US citizenship.
Yet there are no Mexican nationals putting the same pressure on their own exploitive government whose policies have impoverished them, deprived them of jobs at home, and forced them to flee their homes and risk their lives to find work to feed their families. The only possible reason people would flee their homeland and risk their lives to petition a foreign government for amenesty rights, instead of petitioning their own government for the rights to liberty and persuit of happiness and jobs, is that they are in fear of their own government.
Fear of their home government is the universal sign of an oppressed people. The United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave, is not going to stand for fear and oppression in the rest of the world. (Maybe at home, but not in the rest of the world). If the Mexican people are living under fear of a historically corrupt government that has stolen the people resources and deprived the people of the living standard they feel they're entitled to, and those people have the gumption to petition the government of the United States for help, then, by golly, it's the duty of this great nation of ours to demand that the Mexican government step down, shock and awe them if they don't, and redistribute the wealth to the people! (Sorry, I was channeling Bush for a moment.)
As the White House photo shows, George and Vicente are joined-at-the-shoulder buds, so let's forget about the shock and awe. No guns needed here. Just a little friendly discussion of an acquisition and merger deal among two pro-business heads of state.Vincente Fox is all for cooperating in solving the illegal immigration problem on both sides of the border. Our peoples are intertwinned, both economically and culturally. We can liberate Mexico with an economic development approach, you know, all the usual buzz words -- free trade, global economy, brave new American century world, good jobs for workers all over the globe, a great big supersized United States. This annexing Mexico, excuse me, merger and acquisition of the Mexican states into the United States, would definitely fit within the world economic view of the current US and Mexico administrations.
You never know, it might work!
There's a good chance the idea will sell to the voters on both sides of the border. That really is all that is required in the world of political and economic ideas. It has a good chance of selling to the US tax-paying citizens because they might actually feel like they're getting something for their tax dollars fueling this "global economy" craze. Maybe they won't actually get anything, but by annexing the Mexican states to the US states, the American taxpayer will feel like they're getting a supersized American -- more for their money -- like supersized fries and supersized drink with that supersized burger for only 50-cents more. Feeling good is what it's all about in the US of A. And Mexican citizens will feel like they're getting exactly what they've been marching in our streets to demand -- the rights and priveliges of US citizenship -- moving to the head of the line in front of the rest of the world's poor and downtrodden. What's more win-win than that?
After we merge states with Mexico, US investors will rush into Mexico just like carpetbaggers rushed into Dixie after the US Civil War. Our modern-day carpetbagging greed-is-good multinational corporations will have a resaonable expectation of a secure investment not subject to the Mexican government's propensity to default on the peso or grab the assets every time anybody lends them development money. You know if American business went for NAFTA, they're gonna go for this deal.
As we have when we've gained Mexican terriorty before, US investors will create jobs in barren land where nothing grew before so that the 100 million Mexican people still there waiting to cross the border if we don't create jobs there can cancel their desert hiking plans and stay home with their families and go to work at a discount store, meat-packing plant, carpet-manufacturing plant, home-cleaning, lawn-care, or Mexican food business in their own neighborhoods.
US citizens -- the aging Baby Boomers for a start -- looking for a place in the sun where the alligators won't eat them will flock to Mexico to build retirement homes and second career businesses, and they will soon be followed by their children -- now American's crop of middle-age MBAs spreading global economy. That has to be good for Mexico! Heck, once this new US economy gets going, Mexican-Americans can even be doctors and FDA approved legal drug pushers and lawyers and lobbyist and political chiefs and greed-is-good business owners in their own cities and states, thereby creating jobs and a future for themselves, their children, their neighbors, their culture. Instead of doing the jobs Americans won't do in the US, Mexicans will soon be living the American dream in Mexico -- Mexican-American and Other-American citizens living in peace and harmony and prosperity on both sides of the border. What a world!
Think of it! Spreading the US brand of democracy and economic development to our impoverished next-door neighbor -- was't there a "love thy neighbor as thyself" line in the Bible? Keeping families together has a family value ring to it, and doing it in one big acquisition and merger deal that big corporate conglomerates are gonna love has to be the best idea of the brave new american century! It's about the only idea that will satisfy all the parties to this current border debate -- the illegals, the US citizen-taxpayer, the US corporate campaign contributors. If I were a politician, I'd jump on this Mexico Merger platform like a jaybird jumping on a junebug.
Answer to every politician's prayer?
For those US voters (the vast majority of US voters if the current polls are to be believed) who have had enough of the Bush administration's Wars on Terror in any of the various versions and are secretly and openly wishing for the good old days when presidents only screwed consenting adult interns and only spied on political opponents, a Mexico Merger will give them back the most cherished of all possessions -- HOPE --hope to the current US citizens and hope to the newly intergrated Mexican-Americans. Plus it will give Tom Delay something to do as a consultant during the transition of the new US states into voting districts.
As a person who came of age in the 1960s, I like the word "hope," but I'm really fond of the word "intergration." There's plenty of integration to be done. The Democrats are looking for something to get them back into office -- without allienating the new found affection of the secure-the-borders folks while they're courting the newly registered illegal voters. Restating "intergration" and "worker protection" and "Bill of Rights" and "sound economic development" with a Mexico Merger twist to cure the global economy, national debt, and social security woes is the key to a platform with widespread demographic appeal. There's all sorts of integration to spread around -- racial integration, economic integration, regional integration, horizontal and vertical integration, digital integration, global integration -- something to appeal to any thinking person -- which every Democrat and Independent believes he/she is!
If Republicans -- the "don't care what he does, Bush is our man" blind faith people -- are looking for something that will save their party's collective behinds in coming elections, because their culture of corruption mode of operations just isn't working with the base anymore, this is it. Think of it, the Family-Values and the Neoconservative-Global-Empire branches of the Republican Party back together again, joining forces in the Brave New American Century. Makes my heart swell!
Don't forget the oil!
There's even something in it for the "round 'em up and deport 'em" secure the border folks as well -- OIL FOR SUVs AND RVs! And a border small enough you could actually build a fence along it. With Mexico's oil a secure homeland resource, those folks can drive those SUVs and RVs all the way to Cancun and use Mexican-American labor to build that wall just south of there.
Mexico has oil; US needs oil. By merging states, we share the oil for the benefit of our mutual citizens. How much oil, you ask? Mexico is the world’s fifth-largest oil producer; it is the ninth-largest oil exporter and the third-largest supplier of oil to the United States. The US bought $70 billions dollars of oil from Mexico last year. Oil and gas revenues provide about one-third of all Mexican Government revenues. Like its other resources, Mexico has done a great job of mismanaging it. That's where our multinational oil companies could help out.
Just like NAFTA development dollars, Mexico's oil revenue has almost no trickle-down to the Mexican people (sort of like Iraq's oil revenue had no trickle-down to the Iraqi people until Bush went in and liberated them and rebuilt the infrastructure -- sorry, channeling Bush again) which is why the Mexican people come north of the border for jobs. (The $20 billion dollars that Mexicans working illegally in the US send home is what supports Mexico's people. The $70 billion oil revenue supports Mexico's elite with the good Mexican government jobs.)
The multinational oil companies get something as well -- the ability to develop the Mexican oil resources without paying campaign contributions to two sets of government officals, leaving money left after rich executive retirement plans for building refineries in Mexico. They can build refineries using Mexican-American labor, then transport the gasoline (as opposed to transporting oil) to any of the new or old United States that have a need for it. The trucks crossing the border freely between states can be gasoline tankers as well as produce trucks until we get any pipelines needed built. Forget Alaska (we'd just ship any new found oil there to Asia as we do now). Drill Mexico!
By annexing Mexico, we could spread Mexico's oil wealth to the Mexican people (see, there's something in this for the redistribute-the-wealth leftist as well). We get to develop the vast land area and other vast mineral resource for the good of these new United States citizens too (something for the capitalists). Besides, if we don't lock in the oil and the other Mexican resources soon, China will (something for the strong national defense folks).
Jobs for Mexicans and Other-Americans?
Let's not forget agriculture's role in global economy. Mexico has large areas of land suited to argicultural purposes and long growing seasons. Sure, Mexican nationals illegally in the US harvest US grown crops, but Mexico grows in Mexico a good portion of the year-round supply of fruits and vegetables we in the US expect to see in our grocery stores. The same migrant workers harvest crops on both sides of the border, moving back and forth between growing seasons.
We can expand the agricultural resources of Mexico in other ways. The climate of Mexico is much more suited to growing sugar cane, an already proven-by-Brazil form of fuel, than the climate of Nebraska. We can use the corn crops as well as we wean off mid-East oil!
For agriculture employers whose major worry is making sure their Mexicans workers keep doing the agricultural jobs they've done so long, there's nothing to worry about -- for agriculture growers or workers. When all states are United States, subject to US wage-hour and other employment laws, including documentation of legal status, Mexicans can live and work north or south of the Rio Grande without restrictions and without guest passes.
If wages were equal in the US and Mexican states, migrant workers wouldn't need to be migrants to support their families. Isn't that how our leaders told us global economy would work? It will create jobs, they said, good jobs, better than the few jobs lost to cheaper labor across the border. If US labor laws apply, all labor will be equal labor on both sides of the immaginary border. Contrast that with the present system of ever cheaper and cheaper labor, so there will be cheaper and cheaper prices at discount stores, until governments no longer have enough small or big onshore companies or workers paying taxes. Then they have to tax the rich or declare bankruptcy or redistribute the wealth and everybody starts over again? Think they did that once in France. And in Russia. Worked okay in France; Russians are still fiddling with it.
Fulfilling the promise of global economy is perhaps the best reason for US voters and Mexico voters to go for this US-Mexico Merger idea. By joing forces, workers on both sides of the border can take days off from work to parade in the streets demanding fair wages and benefits as good as our elected officials provide themselves. If illegal immigrants will risk arrest and deportation by marching in our streets and demanding the rights of US citizenship, just think how much more of the American dream they will demand as citizens. Think how much fun it will be when citizens of all ethnic backgrounds march in the streets insisting on the rights enumerated in our Constitution and Bill of Rights!
That is one job US workers haven't been willing to do in the past few decades -- demand the truth and a fair shake from the government collecting their taxes. Maybe some of the Mexican national's gumption will rub off on the current sad lot of "middle-class" US workers who have whined silently in their cubicles as their wages and benefits have been stripped away in the name of "free trade." This might be the most unintended consequence of all for the politicians who opened this can of global-economy worms. Talk about the worm turning! That worm is just likely to turn into a snake and bite the giant eagle feeding on it.But, while potentially creating one problem (for employers, not for workers), it might be the solution to a major government problem -- doom of the US Social Security forcasted by this administration after the Bush Republican spending spree robbed it of the surplus built up during the Clinton administration. Everybody seems worried that when Baby Boomers start collecting their due in 2010, Social Security will implode because there are not enough younger taxable workers coming on board. The Bush administration argues that with guest workers documented we will begin to tax those currently slipping through this privilege of citizenship, including collecting Social Security taxes under the right social security numbers. One of the adminstration's touted benefits of guest workers from Mexico is that they are younger workers with many years of social security tax paying ahead of them. If that's true of the 12 million wanting to move to the front of immigration lines right now, then just think what having 120 million younger Mexicans paying into Social Security will do to fix the system.
US-Mexico Merger legislation?
What is needed to make it happen? Not much. I'm sure that with all the law school graduates on the payrolls of US politicians as aids in training for lobbyist jobs, they can make a mountain out of a mole hill, but it doesn't have to be that way. All that is really necessary for this new US-Mexico Merger, is to dust off the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago, add 31 more states to the list, waive all of Mexico's loan defaults to the US since 1848 and our investment in NAFTA as payment (maybe throw in a few billion to convince the Mexican politicians to go along), turn it over to the present Bush-whipped US Congress to pass a "Mexico Merger Resolution," and call the deal done. The Mexican border has always been fluid -- what's a few degrees of latitude among friends. Let's just write out a few words, hold an election, and get out the survey crew and draw a new border south of Cancun.
Structure the legislation so that all the states and the people of Mexico keep all currently owned property (including their Mexican pension plans, if any) and Mexican citizens immediately become voting citizens of [the Mexico Territory of] the United States of America [sort of like Puerto Rico's current status] while we work out the details. Allow all of Mexico's current politicans and government employees to retain their present jobs, at least until the next popular election. All Mexican laws, except the laws discriminating against US investment, property ownership, and right-to-work in Mexico will also remain in effect until the merger is adopted by popular vote, at which time all of Mexico comes under US laws. (We might want to keep their border protection/immigration laws, since they're a lot more strigent than ours.)
The whole thing could happen quickly. If we move ahead with the US-Mexico Merger legislation, we can immediately sign up the 12 million illegals in the US (sorry, already did that), which will give us 12 million voters in favor of the idea, 12 million who won't stay home election day. We can then have them mail voter registration cards home to family members or we can airdrop them all over the population centers of Mexico and fly in electronic voting machines -- the paper-trail kind, please -- into the Mexico homeland for a special election. A fair and free election like our 2000 and 2004 elections, a few recounts, and we're there. We can have the whole thing wrapped up in time for Mexico to supply candiates for a 2008 presidential election.
Vicente Fox-Jeb Bush 2008 ticket!
Just a thought. Jeb Bush and Vicente Fox both need new jobs in 2008, and we sort of need their political backers (the multinational corporations) in the US and in Mexico to buy tickets on this Annex Mexico train so it will leave the station. The Mexican president is demanding the rights to determine US laws and how they are enforced in the US, and our President Bush seems willing to go along with these demands. That being the case, do we really want another Bush in the top job? Maybe we would be better off with Vicente in charge. Besides, (Vicente is already campaigning here!) Sure, we could try a Democrat on the team, but who among them speaks Spanish fluently? We have plenty of time to ponder that after we get the annexation train moving.
Bottom line?If we can't (or won't) control our borders, we're gonna have to move the borders. We've had to expand our borders to accomodate our economic dreams before. Maybe it's time to do it again.
I could go on and on with reasons why this scheme might work, but I need to refill my glass of Sangria -- makes it easier to practice my Spanish lessons. I'm going to need Spanish as a first language when I move south of the Rio Grande and claim my 40 acres in Cancun. (You can keep the mule.) Viva America! Viva the Land of Opportunity and Economic Expansion!
If any of these (sometimes conflicting) ideas appeal to you, pass it on to your elected offical, along with clear instructions as to how you want them to vote on immigration. Then watch how your congressmen and senators actually vote. Remember, if you give a blind man the keys to your car, you can't blame him for driving it over a cliff. NATIONWIDE "TERM LIMITS" RALLY ON NOVEMBER 7, 2006!
More immigration humor!
