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A Marshall Plan for Mexico: Reform Must Precede Aid Arizona Republic Symbolism is important in politics, and the fact that President Bush has chosen Mexico as the destination for the first foreign visit of his presidency says a lot. Mexico holds the potential to be one of our most promising foreign relationships, or one of the United States’ biggest headaches. President Bush is wise to put Mexico at the top of his foreign policy agenda. On the bright side, Mexico has freed itself of the yoke of 70 years of corrupt one party rule with the election of Vicente Fox as its new president. President Fox has his work cut out for him, and it would be unrealistic of us, or the Mexican people, to expect that he will turn the country around overnight. Mexico is also emerging from the severe economic crisis of the early 1990s, and under NAFTA has become an important U.S. trading partner. The danger looms in the belief that there is a short cut to the type of reform that needs to occur in Mexico. Presidents Fox and Bush, as well as many leading congressional Republicans seem to believe that we can move from where we are now, to a fully integrated North American economic and labor market immediately. While that is a laudable long-term goal, rushing from point A to point Z could prove disastrous. High on President Fox’s agenda is freer access for Mexican workers to the U.S. labor market. While this may seem, on the surface, to be a good idea - given Mexico’s worker excess and our tight labor market - it a sure-fire prescription for getting us right back where we started. The idea of a U.S. “safety valve” for excess Mexican labor has not really benefited either country. The ability to export disgruntled workers to the U.S., over the years, has impeded the kinds of economic and social reforms that the country so desperately needs. So long as the entrenched interests in Mexico believe that they can always ship their problems north, there will be no urgency to change the status quo. And so long as the status quo prevails, Mexico will remain a marginal Third World economy, rather than the emerging economic power it has the potential of being. In today’s economy, no country can succeed if its primary exports are raw materials, manpower and brainpower. From the U.S. perspective, importing large numbers of Mexican workers - even temporarily - is a long-term drag on our economy. The kind of workers being contemplated under an expanded guest worker program, are precisely the kind we don’t need. The are some sectors of our economy that want the kind of low cost, unskilled labor that Mexico can provide, but satisfying those desires will come at a heavy cost. The truth of the matter is that we need less unskilled labor in the United States, not more. Imported unskilled labor has allowed nonviable industries like the garment industry to hang on for a few more years; impeded investment in mechanization for vital industries like agriculture; and has shifted costs in many sectors of the service industry. Today’s economic reality is that every low wage job in the United States must be heavily subsidized by the taxpayers in order to survive. In addition to creating an economic drag, a policy of importing unskilled labor is a social time bomb. Economists and social scientist are rightly concerned about the impact of the widening wealth and income gap in the U.S. It is a problem not made any easier by policies that drives down the price of labor for those unskilled and low skilled jobs that remain in our economy. The meeting between Presidents Fox and Bush will be a tip-off as to whether these two new leaders are politicians or statesmen. As politicians, they are apt to satisfy the short-term interests looking for an easy answer to Mexico’s labor surplus and the desire of some American businesses to gain access to that labor. As statesmen, they will opt for long-term economic and social reforms that will help people prosper where they are, and even encourage many of the Mexicans who are here illegally to return and help Mexico prosper. |
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