How Free Trade Reform Can Solve the Problem of Illegal Immigration from Mexico: A Modest Proposal

I will begin by stating that as I pleased as I was with myself for concocting this inspired if long-winded title, I now regret my decision.  The title might be appropriate for, say,  a white paper…but not for what I have to say today.  But I can’t think of anything more terse or pithy.   So I will continue say what I have to say without further apology, and if you made it past the ostentatious title, perhaps you’ll read on.

    Let’s start with a few fundamental facts with which I believe most of us can agree:

1-     The various North American trade agreements of the past two decades have contained specific language relating to immigration as an integral component of free trade.

 2-     While the spirit of these agreements has consistently invoked the notion of a fundamental equality between signatories, Canada and the U.S. have received trade-related immigration benefits which have been denied to Mexico.  For example, U.S. and Canadian professionals have a painless, no-petition treaty visa process; but those same professionals from Mexico have it as tough as any H-1B.

3-     Although Mexico has at times demanded equal trade-related migratory access for its nationals, the U.S. and Canada have effectively vetoed this, fearing that the availability of such access for Mexican would trigger uncontrolled migration to the detriment of U.S. and Canadian workforces.

Now, this next one you may or may not agree with, but I believe that:

4-     Human resources are the single most important shared component of multilateral trade agreements…yes, people.  Why do I say this? Because while we can battle with the Mexicans over tomato tariffs or bicker with the Canadians about pulpwood exports, the one shared trade component of all commodity and service trade agreements is the workforce upon which production and delivery depend.

Looking at this reality, and looking at the success (albeit with many continuing struggles) that the European Union has achieved in facilitating worker mobility between member nations, is it so far fetched to believe that the one element keeping the proverbial “whole” (i.e., all three partner nations) from being “greater than the sum of its parts” (i.e., each nation’s independent trade success without a trade agreement) is an intelligent solution to market-driven workforce mobility?

My goodness…what a big sentence that was.  Terse and pithy I’m not today.

Even if you accept that forth premise I am proposing, the issue of the 12+ million illegal immigrants in the U.S. today – the vast majority of them Mexican – would seem to suggest that in granting Mexico the same simplified work visa process it has granted Canada, the U.S. would face a flood of Mexican workers all to eager to displace Americans, right?

Wrong, and here’s why: Mexicans are economic immigrants, and they come to the U.S.for economic reasons.  Mexicans like Mexico and prefer to live in their magnificent country, but they come to the U.S. to make a buck.  And while we can't suddenly fix the Mexican economy to create opportunity for these folks, we must understand how it all ties together: despite the convoluted, totally distorted U.S. policies which turn a boatload of Haitians around while welcoming any Cuban lucky enough to land with dry feet…there IS a difference between “political” migrants and “economic” migrants.  Political migrants are driven from their homeland and cannot return because of persecution…but economic migrants from politically stable, free nations go back home…especially if “home” is a cheap Greyhound ticket ride away.

Mexican workers have been the backbone of the U.S. agricultural economy since the Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery.   Like Filipino nurses, IT professionals from India, and the enumerated professions which, via NAFTA, permit Canadian professionals to enter the U.S. swiftly, Mexican workers have historically come to the U.S. for one reason: to make money to support their families back home.  Come work the season, get the cash, go back home.  That, in fact, is the underlying logic of the temporary visas which permit Argentine ski bums to work seasonally in Colorado ski resorts and U.S. farms to bring in seasonal agricultural workers for harvest.  They come, they work, they go home.  (When I was a visa officer at the U.S. Consulate in Juarez, Mexico, I can’t begin to count the hundreds of wrinkled old men I met who were heading back to California with their seasonal visas after six months in their little village deep in Mexico.  Proudly they would speak of their decades of this rhythm of life, often starting with the bracero program decades ago…it worked and it worked well, for them as well as for the U.S. farms they returned to loyally year after year.

So here’s my question:  what makes an campesino tomato picker any more of a visa security risk than a Canadian RN?  In fact, it is downright weird when you think about it: despite the lobbying of U.S. healthcare and IT labor organizations, the U.S. demand for these professions is self evident and so the Canadians can get hired in the U.S. and get busy in a matter of days.  When was the last time you heard of a U.S. farmworkers’ labor union protesting the arrival of Mexican farm laborers?  Truth be told, there just aren’t a whole bunch of U.S. citizen farm laborers these days…unless you count Aunt Betty’s heirloom tomato garden out back.

So why not do this:

1- Revisit the migratory policies associated with free trade and give Mexican agricultural laborers – AND Mexican professionals in the same classes as Canadian professionals – the ease and speed of treaty visa classification pursuant to existing trade agreements.

2- Utilize the biometric technology that we’ve had for 20+ years (I was stoked about it in 1987, when biometrically-secure border crossing cards were discussed and abandoned) and the lessons learned form the TWIC fiasco (the transit worker biometric effort that has cost each U.S. taxpayer thousands per card issued…don’t get me started on that one) to create a truly secure biometric treaty visa card which implements the same intraagency and international security crosschecks via existing DHS and shared international databases, allowing the movement of these workers to be dictated by U.S. economic demands, without bureaucracy impeding the U.S. companies who need time-sensitive labor deployment

3- Take the massive airport DHS workforce and establish a secure U.S. EXIT inspection – at ports, borders, and airports – to insure that those who come in leave on time, as most other nations have been doing for decades.  They clock in at inspection when they arrive in the U.S. and they clock out when season/assignment is over and they depart the U.S..  Unlike our current I-94 paper card fiasco which does nothing to trace those who arrive and never leave, an exit procedure would,  and those who overstay – banker, lawyer, or farm laborer – would not ONLY be barred from re-entry, but their FAILURE to leave would notify ICE, and we would actually know who is in our country and needs to be located.

4- Utilize the establishment of truly fair trade visa guidelines as an opportunity to renegotiate some of the more ill-conceived U.S./Mexican tariff rules which have unjustly decimated certain agricultural sectors of the U.S. economy.

Nutshell: if Mexican workers can come and go as U.S. employers need them as can Canadians, they will come, they will work, and they will go home.  If we establish both entry AND exit controls via TRUE biometric technologies and enforce strictly overstay violations, Mexicans, as economic migrants, will comply. 

I’ve spoken to thousands of Mexican workers over the last twenty years and the fact is that when they overstay, it is because they are afraid they won’t be able to come back for the next season.  Eliminate that fear and, I believe, we will stem most illegal migration from Mexico.