How to stop Mexicans from heading north.

last updated 8 January 2015

Mexico

Miguel Ángel Vite Pérez

Making illegal immigration a felony won’t solve America’s problems with migrants, said Miguel Ángel Vite Pérez in Mexico City’s El Universal. A bill now being considered in the U.S. Congress would consign any foreigner caught without a work visa to jail and then deportation. President Vicente Fox is understandably upset. Fox needs the U.S. labor market to continue serving as his “safety valve” to siphon off some of the many Mexicans who can’t find jobs here. But his diplomatic efforts to oppose the bill—“sending his foreign minister to rally other Central American governments,” for example—are doomed. He’ll never convince the U.S. not to secure its border as it sees fit. And the U.S. will surely not be able to arrest every undocumented worker in California. A better solution would be to explain to the U.S. government and businesses that “the real danger to their safety comes from having a neighbor mired in poverty and misery.” If the U.S. and Mexican governments worked together to create jobs down here, there’d be no desperate northward flow of workers. Instead of spending money jailing and deporting Mexicans, the U.S. could try contributing to “a fund of public assistance.” Wouldn’t that be more neighborly?