Posted on 09/09/2001 10:47:01 AM PDT by Luis Gonzalez
While the headlines about Mexican President Vicente Fox's visit to the United States last week focused on immigration talks, they may have missed the most important point: the new U.S. ``special relationship'' with Mexico will have a major impact on U.S. foreign policy and hemispheric affairs.
I didn't see the faces of the ambassadors of Great Britain, Canada and China when President Bush proclaimed on Wednesday that ``the United States has no more important relationship in the world than the one we have with Mexico.'' But I can't imagine their being too happy about it.
And I didn't see the faces of the scores of U.S. State Department officials who spent their careers studying Russian and Chinese in hopes of climbing the diplomatic ladder. Many of them must be wondering whether they shouldn't have studied Spanish instead, which until recently was a bad career move unless you wanted to be U.S. consul in Tegucigalpa.
Skeptics may think that Bush's statement was pure rhetoric, and that he was pandering to Mexico because his pollsters are telling him that he will need 40 percent of the Hispanic vote -- which traditionally goes Democratic -- if he wants to be reelected.
Not so. Much to the dismay of the traditional U.S. foreign policy establishment, no country in the world has a greater impact on daily life in America than Mexico, whether you are talking about immigration, drugs, the environment, or -- increasingly -- domestic politics.
And since the 1994 free-trade agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico, Mexico has become a key U.S. trade partner. Mexico today buys more U.S. goods than France, Germany, Spain and Italy together.
WHAT WILL CHANGE
So what will change with the new U.S.-Mexico ``special relationship''? Among the things I heard last week in the corridors of The Herald's Conference of the Americas, which was attended by Fox, eight Latin American foreign ministers and the top U.S. officials in charge of Latin American affairs:
For the first time, Mexico is seeking a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Fox's government is also actively supporting U.S.-backed collective measures for the defense of democracy in Latin America, and is openly preparing to play a role in the Colombian and Cuban controversies.
Fox did just that on the last day of his U.S. trip, when he announced at the Organization of American States that Mexico is considering withdrawing from the 1947 Inter-American Reciprocal Defense Treaty, which was designed to protect the region from communism. Calling the treaty ``obsolete and useless,'' Fox proposed a new pact to react to other threats, such as natural disasters.
Many countries may follow some of Mexico's foreign policy initiatives, and Brazil will have little choice but to join the crowd or be left isolated. ``We welcome the competition,'' a senior diplomat from one of Brazil's neighboring countries told me, with a big smile.
MEXICO AS BRIDGE
Mexico's foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, said he sees Mexico playing the role of ``a bridge country.'' He added, ``We are thinking of ourselves as a bridge between the First and the Third World, between North and South, between East and West, between tradition and modernity.''
Castañeda noted that, in the 1970s, Mexican president Luis Echeverria proudly proclaimed that Mexico was a Third World country. In the 1990s, president Carlos Salinas sold the idea that Mexico was a First World country. Both were wrong, Castañeda said, because Mexico ``has one leg on each of these worlds.''
Interesting. But recent history suggests that Mexico will choose to be the least developed North American country, rather than the most developed Latin American country. And Bush's statement last week will only accelerate that trend. At the most, Mexico will be Latin America's closest friend in North America.
Despite the stereotypes perpetuated by the media, bigots and tourists seeing the more seamy side of Mexico, the Mexican people are forward-thinking, more affluent than they are portrayed in the media and very industrious and energetic. They may nap in the afternoon but they are up before the crack of dawn. In the past few decades, their culture while still rooted in Spain has become Americanized.
The American unions have reason to fear as their own members in comparison with typical Mexican workers are lazy, argumentative and expensive. Combined with Canada (minus French-loving Quebec, natch), the US and Mexico would be a great trading bloc. Our big mutual concern in terms of regional security should be the emerging relationship of Venezuala with China and the liberation of Cuba. We should keep our eyes on Venuzuala and determine if they and their pals in China are financing Castro and other terrorists and "revolutionaries" in the less stable Latin American countries and South Mexico.
2 Posted on 09/09/2001 07:27:08 PDT by jhofmann
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The rent includes provision, for the property owner to pay real estate taxes. Their everyday purchases include payment of sales taxes.
Last time I checked, Texas didn't have a state income tax. If the illegal immigrant is paid in a normal payroll, deductions will be made for FICA, state and federal unemployment and other items. If paid in cash, obviously not the same.
My point: they do pay some, if not all, taxes.
I'm a native of Southern California which, like Texas, is heavily impacted by legal and illegal immigration. A few years ago I got really angry. My anger didn't cause the immigrants to leave. For my serenity, I have had to learn to accept reality, even if I don't like it.
George Bush is no fool. You can bet former best buddy Jean Chretien up there in The Big Snow has crapped his diaper over all this.
I see the same thing here in AZ. When I was watching local news recently, a story came up about increased immigration from Mexico. The newscaster said, with a big smile on her face, "Well, I guess we'll all have to learn Spanish." EXCUSE ME, how about THEY learn ENGLISH! If I moved to Mexico, or Germany, or France, or wherever, I should expect them to learn English for me?????
From what I've seen, it is true that the Mexican workers work extremely hard. If they're doing jobs Americans won't do, fine and dandy. I just have a problem with ones that soak the taxpayers. We have illegals in our schools, everyone knows they are, nothing is done about it. I've said it on several threads before, Tucson alone spent $1.8 Million on services to illegals last year, and has a hospital nearly $50 Million in debt, despite a tax increase that was supposed to fix that. They're talking of shutting it down, what good will that do? It will just move the people who can't pay their bills to a different hospital. Domino effect, anyone? The only thing that will fix this is deportation, or massive tax increases to subsidize non-payers. Want to take a guess which one is going to happen?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me Mexico has plenty of resources, there's no excuse for all these people to be so destitute they have to sneak over here and risk dying of thirst to get a job. The problem is corrupt government. US cannot fix the un-fixable. They need to throw the bums out, and make Mexico a US-style Republic.
Sorry for not making myself better understood.
Property taxes get worked out over a long period of time and how properties are used. Residential properties get taxed at a rate appropriate to their "normal" use. A very common example here with illegal immigration. A single bedroom apartment might have one or two people living there, perhaps a third if it's a young married couple with a newborn in a crib. Those types of places are taxed that way. The local community infrastructure with water and sewer is built and maintained that way, by projected use, same with all the other services, roads, county buildings, schools,policing, garabge pickup-you name it. Now the difference is, and this is verifiable all over the country, is that a lot of times that same single bedroom apartment might have an entire extended family living there, a dozen people. No lie, a dozen. I have heard of even up to TWENTY people. They not only do not use the domicile for it's intended use, but the taxes paid are disproportionately and historically lower than what is needed, even though the "same" property tax is paid by the landlord. This causes all sorts of economic problems in the community. School budgets are based on that single bedroom apartment amount of people normally, not 6 extra kids in the school system from that one apartment, and the local hopital budget doubling with only the same amount of money coming in because these illegals get crap pay and zero benefits, including no insurance in most cases. On and on, more community policing required, higher incidence of fires maybe. It's a subsidised life for the illegals so that a few employers can skate without paying. a double subsidy of the two class economic system, being created right in front of us, and all over the country.
My county is going through this right now, a new and very expensive school has to be built from the influx of extended immigrant families in just the last two years. The population has increased a full third in just two years, primarily from illegal immigrants, or at least 1/2 or better. That's a lot of people coming in that quickly and honestly not contributing all that much in a normal amount to local economics except for a handful of people who really benfit from the illegals. It has drastically effected everything here, and not really for the better except a few of the employers profit margins at the expense of the people already here in general who normally would have provided the workforce for them, and whom also would have re-spent the bulk of the money in the community and not shipped the cash via western union out of the county and out of the country like they do to a large extent. There are signs in spanish here for exactly that reason, and you can see them friday night lining up to ship cash out of the county, while still enjoying the benefits of living here, it's subsidised. The "normal" tax rate is insufficient to pay for what was historically being paid for, for decades, with normal reasonable population growth. The county in the last election threatened either an increase in property tax or a rise in local sales tax, either way, the tax rate was going to go up, because the old formula ceased to be viable. We voted yes on the sales tax, but it still means everyone's tax went up regardless of any illegal immigrants much smaller amount of purchases, as they ship a huge amount of the money out of the community. If they even broke even with their total economic input this wouldn't have mattered whatsoever, no percentage increase would have been required, proving that illegal immigrants here are a net total economic loss, not any total benefit. We now pay a much higher total local tax rate because of this dual illegal immigrant and employer subsidy, this wink wink nod nod deal with local fatcats. and if you follow the tax food chain, it gets into state and federal expenses and taxation as well. It's a subsidy, pure and simple.
And this situation is all over the country by this almost complete ignoring of the laws that are in place, they are not enforced to any degree, and they were originally put there to prevent what is happening now.. It's a proportional economic thing, as well as social. You can read example after example, it's this creation of the master/serf two class system that is happening.
Massive undocumented or phony documented illegal immigration costs more/most people so that a much smaller few may make "more profits". They also make it so there are less and less entry level and middle level jobs for people naturally born here. Silicon valley here this ain't, there's so many normal jobs and that's it for all practical matters. You don't one day get laid off from a construction job and tomorrow waltz into a 6 figure white collar information technology job that doesn't exist. And now even those sorts of jobs are being effected. I have seen the anecdotal stories posted on this forum. There's something wrong going on here.
Normal controlled lower numerical level and legal immigration does not have this effect. That is the way it is supposed to be, how it was historically, and no one really has any problems with that method. There's the differences.
These are real quantitative problems, they aren't illusions or xenophobia. this isn't racist demogagouery. There are millions of examples, it's not "theory" it's real bread and butter economic issues, and real social assimilation and political transformation issues.
Excellent points. Republicans had better expend more energy pursuing the hispanic vote to counter the block democrat (up to 90%) voting patterns of Blacks, Jews and Gays.
I am 53 years old, and a native of Southern California. Along with Texas, we have perhaps the most and longest history of the immigration impacts that you mention.
When I was a schoolboy, there were "braceros" who came during various crop picking seasons. However, my mother has her elementary school pictures, from the 1930s in Whittier California. About half the class was, based on physical appearance, of Mexican ancestry.
In other words, it has been going on for a long time. Georgia is just one of several areas, further from the border, to be impacted. FYI, in Seattle, they have a Spanish language channel of the cable TV.
My cousins in Wyoming tell of Jackson Hole resort workers, coming from Mexico. The year-round population up there is very small, so relatively small numbers of immigrants are easily noticed. The permanent, American types don't like it. If you or I wanted those jobs, I'm sure the business owners would hire us, instead of the immigrant. Fact is, however, folks aren't rushing to Wyoming, to wash dishes for $5.00. That is except folks from Mexico.
Give Bush credit. He is stepping up to the plate, on a major issue. All of my ancestors came to North America, on wooden ships. The death rate often reached 25 percent of the passengers. So the relative hardship conditions you cite, horrendous by current standards, aren't much different than previous newcomers.
I know the difference between legal and illegal. I propose that many of our own ancestors would have risked being "illegal", to escape from the conditions they were leaving, and to get the reward that North America offered (not promised). Going further, any place in the world worth getting to, today, is facing immigration pressures. Namely, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia to name a few.
I hope Bush comes up with something which is practical and fair. My purpose isn't to make excuses, or claim that the impacts should be overlooked. For the sake of my sanity, serenity and resting pulse rate, I have sought to see this through the prism of historical reality.
Maybe we need an "immigration tax" to be paid by the "guest worker", his employer, or both. The classification of "guest worker" would apply to ANYONE not yet a citizen. The proceeds of immigrant taxes would go to the communities. I lived in Germany in 1969/70, which then had guest workers. Maybe we should review our own programs, from earlier times, and policies of other countries. Our own policies of recent years have certainly failed.
Anyway, good luck in cal. I think this next century will be a lot different from the last century there, I hope it doesn't wind up like Zimbabwe or Guatemala. Give it ten years, see what happens.
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