Mexican Standoff

The Bush proposal to offer amnesty to some three million Mexicans living illegally in the United States (some estimate it at seven million) is motivated, we are told, by Republican determination to win the Hispanic vote. Hispanics are allegedly fast becoming the most important voting bloc in the U.S. Given the closeness of last year's vote, Republican strategists explain, Bush will need every Hispanic vote he can get in order to win in 2004.

It is hard to believe the Bush people take such nonsense seriously. According to the Census Bureau, Hispanics are 12.5 percent of the population. From 1990 to 2000 the Hispanic population increased by 57.9 percent, while the U.S. population as a whole increased by only 13.2 percent. The Mexican Hispanic population increased by 52.9 percent. Sounds compelling. However, in the U.S. the Electoral College, not the popular vote, determines electoral outcomes. Half of all Hispanics live in just two states-California (31.1 percent) and Texas (18.9 percent). Neither state is exactly in contention in 2004. True, Hispanics could tip the race in a close state like Florida. But given how poorly Bush did with almost all categories of voters in this traditionally Republican state, it seems bizarre to identify Hispanics (only 11 percent of Florida's voters) as the key to victory. Moreover, Democrats will always succeed in outbidding the Republicans among Hispanics. Despite Bush's shameless pandering last year, he still only won 35 percent of the Hispanic vote-no better than Nixon in 1972 and worse than Reagan in 1984.

Bush's amnesty proposal actually has very little to do with election calculations. It is part and parcel of the "cheap labor" policy relentlessly pursued by U.S. financial and corporate elites and their Mexican satraps. The U.S. regards Mexico as little more than a permanent source of cheap labor-a means of ensuring that U.S. workers behave themselves lest they get replaced by people willing to work for $1 an hour or have their jobs transferred south of the border. Mexico's rulers were entrusted with ensuring stability-for which they were bankrolled handsomely. The only way they knew how to do it was to dump Mexico's poor and uneducated population on the United States. Whenever Mexico got into trouble, its rulers would threaten Washington with dumping on a scale likely to provoke public outrage. Washington would soon come up with the requisite cash.

The cynicism of this arrangement was revealed by Mexico's current foreign minister, Jorge Castaneda, in an article in the July 1995 issue of The Atlantic. "During the NAFTA debate?Carlos Salinas argued that failure to ratify the treaty would bring about an economic collapse in Mexico, which in turn would bring about a wave of undocumented immigration to the north. The economic collapse came anyway, but the wave looks more like a steadily rising tide? Any attempt to clamp down on immigration?will make social peace in the barrios and pueblos of Mexico untenable? Some Americans?dislike immigration, but there is very little they can do about it, and the consequences of trying to stop immigration would also certainly be more pernicious than any conceivable advantage."

The current immigration wave began in the 1980s. It dates from the time Mexico threatened to default on its debts and the IMF stepped in to take over the running of Mexico's economy. Cuts in government expenditure soon followed, as did wage cuts, privatization and the end of subsidies for small farmers. With unemployment soaring, Mexicans made their way north. Things got even worse when Mexico prepared for NAFTA. To demonstrate what a gloriously open market to U.S. products Mexico would be, its rulers maintained an overvalued peso; Mexican firms were soon out of business and workers were crossing the border. The 1994-'95 Clinton bailout only exacerbated matters. The United States pledged $20 billion, the IMF $17.8 billion, to prop up the peso. To pay this money back Mexico had to generate foreign exchange by raising taxes and interest rates, by borrowing heavily in the private capital markets and by cutting public expenditures. The movement north became a flood.

As he campaigned for the presidency last year, National Action Party candidate Vicente Fox called for the removal of all barriers to the entry of Mexicans into the U.S. In accordance with the wishes of the international financial community, Fox was promising to open the Mexican economy to foreign investors even more than had his PRI predecessor. In return, he demanded that Americans accept many more immigrants. Rather than the brutal realism of Castaneda, Fox offered up the fraudulent vision of the illegal immigrant as hero. In a speech in Fresno last March Fox raved to his Mexican audience: "I come with my hand extended...for a Mexico that doesn't forget you? [N]ever have you forgotten your values and your traditions. You continue to be Mexican. Besides missing you...we are grateful to you..."

In return for amnesty and an acceptance of more immigrants, Fox promised to cooperate with U.S. authorities on cracking down on illegal immigration. Just how serious Fox was about cutting back the flow of illegal immigrants was revealed in May by his newly created government agency, the Office for Mexicans Abroad. It announced that it would be issuing survival kits to people planning to migrate illegally into the U.S. containing, among other things, anti-diarrhea medicine, adhesive bandages, aspirin, water, salt, dry meat, cans of tuna and granola.

Meanwhile President Bush, in his ferocious determination to win reelection, has aligned himself with the trucking industry and against the Teamsters and the Democrats in opposing the imposition of any requirements on Mexican trucks entering the U.S. There goes the white male vote-the Republicans' once unshakable base.