Nobody every talks about illegal immigration between the United States and Canada. Why do so many people from Latin America attempt to emigrate to the United States?
I believe the obvious answer is that the economic opportunities are better here than south of the Rio Grande. But Why? I can only think of two possibilities: Natural resources and politics. Does the United States have more natural resources (per capita) than their own country? Do their politicians repress economic growth through over regulation? Or is there a reason that I’m not considering?
Mexico and many other Latin American countries are a kleptocracy, and without too much respect for the rule of law. That corruption has opened the door to the drug cartels, who can operate without much police interference for the cost of a few pesos to the right people.
Real and enforceable capitalism drives a country’s wealth, what a shock. Hence we have the jobs for Pedro and Consuela.
There is no widely accepted answer for why some countries fail and others succeed.
The broad array of answers generally fall into one of three or four categories:[ul]
[li]Environmental factors[/li][li]Culture[/li][li]Genetics[/li][li]Luck[/li][/ul]
The genetics explanation is politically unacceptable and will probably be considered racist by most people.
The US and Canada have economies that offer better job opportunities, a more reliable rule of law and governments that are better equipped to tax and spend on public infrastructure.
Interestingly, on the other side of the Atlantic, there is also a tendency to illegal immigration from Africa and the wars zones of the MiddleEast. Some are fleeing war and persecution, others are simply escaping poverty. There is a great difficulty in separating those who are refugees seeking asylum and those who are economic immigrants.
It is a matter of great concern in Europe, the politicians don’t know quite what to do about it. The Mediterranean has become Europes Rio Grande and it is a good deal wider, deeper and more deadly. The same situation also persists in Australia, whose government has taken very questionable steps to deal with ‘boat people’ which is surprising given the emptiness of that continent.
The debate in the US is somewhat tempered by the fact that it is a nation founded by refugees and immigrants. Europe does not have those big empty spaces and there is a great worry about this tide of humanity desperately trying to get to the richer North European countries.
I doubt whether most of these people would make these dangerous journeys if they came from countries that functioned. You might ask why are there so many broken countries?
Usually the answer to that is rather closer to home and how rich countries have a tendency to interfere with the politics of any other country that has resources that are useful. Also the idea of a country, a nation with borders and governments and so on, does not translate very well in many parts of world. Often the borders were not natural or the idea of the people who lived there, they were imposed from outside for the convenience of other countries. Too many straight lines is a fairly obvious indication.
Continued immigration will change the culture and at some point those other habits such as kleptocracy and not much respect for the rule of law will become the norm here. When the USA is no better than down there, then it will stop.
I am afraid that when is the question on that, not if.
The situation between the USA and Mexico with respect to illegal immigration is quite unusual because large parts of what is now the US was taken from Mexico by force, it lost a substantial amount of territory.
In the face of this historic injustice, branding migration by Mexicans to what was clearly Mexican territory appropriated by the US must seem a dubious concept south of the border.
The fact that much of the agriculture of the southern US relies on cheap labour from the south also makes these legal distinctions very questionable. Illegal status keeps the wages down and supplies a docile workforce with few rights.
At least the US has illegal immigrant amnesties from time to time where they get the opportunity for citizenship. Which is more than can be said for many developed economies with a significant hidden workforce. The UK, for example.
Reducing immigration into a simple question of legality is to ignore a lot of inconvenient truths.
Well, given Mexico can’t run the parts they kept, I’d say the USA getting the parts they did and running them successfully has been a net benefit to the north american continent overall.
Mexico sucks mostly because “they” can’t run a country.
lol. Unless you are some sort of an ultra-nationalist revanchist the American Southwest is American territory for all intents and purposes considering the Mexican-American War occurred a century and a half ago. Its as silly and absurd as the Bolivians wanting their coastal territory back from Chile or the Germans wanting to reverse 1945. This of course ignoring that while the Mexican-American War probably wasn’t the cleanest war the US has ever fought, it erupted as a result of two-way border fighting as well as the fact that the Mexican government’s instability meant that some foreign power if not the US would eventually control California.
The vast majority of illegal immigrants from Latin America are from Mexico and the northern triangle of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador).
All four countries have high levels of inequality and large numbers of very poor people. More people come when there’s a high demand for cheap labor; fewer come when the U.S. economy is doing poorly. It’s basic supply and demand.
All four countries also suffer from very high levels of violence. much of it at the hands of state security forces who may or may not be working for organized crime groups. The northern triangle countries also have a major gang problem. The gangs haven’t always been connected to the drug cartels. Now many of them are.
It isn’t just poverty and mismanagement. Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the hemisphere and lord knows its a kleptocracy. But the security forces were thoroughly dismantled and rebuilt over the course of the revolution; neither the police nor the army engage in the kinds of human rights violations that are rampant in the northern triangle. Gangs aren’t a significant issue and people don’t live in fear of the police.
The drug cartels wreak their havoc because Americans buy drugs and sell guns, the former of course being the far larger problem. It’s US drug consumption that has devastated so much of Mexico and Central America and, before those countries, Colombia, which already had plenty of troubles of its own.
Not drug consumption, but the Drug War. If the drug production and sales were legal, it’d be a whole different ballgame. As far as I can tell, the ONLY thing that the Drug War has accomplished is consistently guaranteeing high profits for criminals (and keeping our prisons fully stocked with nonviolent criminals).
I think the point is that Germany lost a fair amount of territory at the end of WWII that it has never recovered–and not necessarily territory they’d seized in the war, but territory that had already been German for some time. Eastern Pomerania and East Prussia, for example.
As far as I know, there’s not a significant problem in Gdansk of illegal German immigrants who are moving there on the grounds that it’s properly German territory. Similarly, I really don’t think the massive influx of illegal Mexican immigrants to the U.S. is some kind of deliberate move to reverse the loss of territory in 1848. Or if it is, they’re keeping the rhetoric about it amazingly quiet. The problem really does seem to have more to do with lack of economic opportunities and reliable rule of law back home than any kind of revanchism.
(Eh, forget I said Gdansk. That city in particular isn’t the best example of what I meant, which was just that Germany after WWII is smaller than it was before Hitler came to power, and “Germans illegally occupying the regions they lost out of a desire to reclaim them” doesn’t seem to be a thing. Nor does “Mexicans illegally occupying the regions they lost out of a desire to reclaim them” seem to be a thing. As an explanation for illegal immigration, I just don’t think that holds water.)
I seem to recollect the states to the south of the US were popularly regarded as a ‘Uncle Sams backyard’ with respect to US foreign policy. The influence of any other state would be actively discouraged by the US…The Monroe doctrine? The CIA actively destabilised any regime that did not conform to US interests and supported and armed some vicious authoritarian regimes to root out any leftist influence. Many of these countries were wracked by years of civil war.
Then came the ‘War on Drugs’. A policy developed by the Reagan administration that had little positive influence on reducing the supply of narcotics but again destabilised many states in central and south America. Some were almost run by drug dealers - Narco states. The biggest profits were to be found supplying the huge US market for illegal drugs.
These countries have not been allowed to evolve stable, democratic governments in peace by the superpower to the North. Maybe that is part of the reason why many people up-sticks to leave their corrupt countries with broken economies and migrate Northwards.
The country has a wealth of resources, an inexpensive workforce among them. The only thing getting in there way are the corrupt politicians who work in concert with the drug dealers and gangs. It’s very sad. And illegal immigration to the U.S. just helps perpetuate the system by allowing those who might be the most industrious to leave. That and, Mexico doesn’t have to worry about XX million of Mexicans. If those XX million were back in Mexico, the uprising that is evidently needed would be closer at hand.
Imagine if the USA were demolished economically. A parent has a family to support. The kids don’t have proper clothes and are often hungry. Canada is doing just fine economically. The parent goes Canada to work illegally but makes 3 times the amount of money they could make in the USA. This, of course, has no respect for the rule of law in Canada, but, it seems to be the morally correct thing to do, to do whatever is necessary to provide for your family as long as you cause no direct harm to anyone else. So exactly how important is “respect for the rule of law” if you kids go to bed hungry?