The "Perfect Storm" of Immigration
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
By: Dan Stein

-

Newly released Census data show that immigration to the United States surged over the record-setting pace of the 1990s. The 1990s, of course, were a period of robust economic expansion and record low unemployment. Up until the past several months, the U.S. economy has been mired in a three-year slump and the nascent recovery still has not resulted in significant job growth.

The evidence suggests that immigration is increasingly a phenomenon that is driven by forces unrelated to the social and economic realities of the United States. Moreover, the net annual post-2000 immigration influx of 1.4 million people may be about to get a whole lot bigger.

Economic conditions in Mexico, the largest source of legal and illegal immigrants to the U.S., have deteriorated rapidly and threaten to spiral into a full-blown crisis. The Mexican peso has lost more than a quarter of its value in the last 18 months, driving millions of Mexicans even deeper into poverty. Even at the depressed value of their currency and the favorable export conditions under NAFTA, Mexico still cannot compete with countries like China in producing low-cost goods to stock the shelves of Wal-Mart and other U.S. retailers.

The economic crisis is quickly becoming a political one in Mexico, as labor unrest threatens still further economic disruption that the country can ill-afford. What is looming are all the elements of the migration equivalent of the perfect storm coming together. It is a storm of unprecedented migration that could sweep across Mexico and into the United States with devastating impact.

Given the current situation in Mexico and the very real prospects that things will get worse, even an intermittent minimum wage job in the U.S. will look attractive to more Mexicans. Add to that the guarantee of free education for their children, basic health care, an assortment of social benefits that do not differentiate between legal and illegal residents, and the growing political clout that comes along with the increasing population of Mexican immigrants, and the levels of immigration we are experiencing today may seem trivial compared to what may be just around the corner.

In light of the storm that is threatening to break upon us, the United States must act decisively and quickly. On the foreign policy front, the United States must make it clear to the Fox government that its window-dressing economic and political reforms will no longer have support from Washington. Unless Fox acts to break the oligarchy’s iron grip on that country’s economy and allows it to function in a way that benefits all of the Mexico’s people, he should expect no more loan guarantees from us to perpetuate a corrupt and bankrupt system.

Domestically, the United States must act preemptively to send a clear message to would-be migrants that a mass northward exodus is not an option. This can only be achieved by demonstrating resolve in enforcing our immigration laws. There must be a serious effort to crack down on employers who hire illegal aliens, and meaningful cooperation between local and federal law enforcement to identify and remove people who are in the country illegally rather than shielding them as many currently do. Most importantly, Congress and the Bush Administration must end all talk of granting amnesty to illegal aliens. That will only encourage an even greater wave of illegal migration.

With the crisis intensifying in Mexico the United States must either assert control over its immigration policies or be prepared to deal with the consequences of a massive and sustained flow of migration the likes of which we have never seen. We must be prepared to act in our national interests, or accept that how we live and work in this country will be determined by events in other countries.

The “perfect storm” of immigration is forming and may break upon us sooner than we expect. The crisis in Mexico and throughout much of Latin America is real and is probably going to get a whole worse before it gets better. The misery of people in those countries is real, as well, and must not be dismissed or trivialized. This decision facing us is how much we want to share in that misery.