With all of the Mexican immigrants in America (legal and illegal) that are here to escape the poor living conditions of Mexico and to give their children a chance at an education I was wondering what obstacles stood in the way of the following solution.
It seems that a lot of them are hard working and are good manual laborers so what would stop them (hundred of thousands of them) from building their own prosperous city somewhere just across the border of texas?
Is it a matter of a corrupt Mexican government that would put too many sanctions and restrictions on them and make life miserable? Is it a matter of crime in Mexico and the city would soon be over run by gangs crime lords and there would be no police to defend it? Is it a matter of raw material resources to actually “build” a city?
New Orleans was a city that was wiped out by a hurricane and they are slowly rebuilding the infrastructure and economy.
Why not build a Mexican city that can support itself?
Now, I’ve never been to and don’t know much about a place like Tijuana but is that city just too far gone to be rebuilt into something good? I’ve heard they have universities there.
Lack of resources and a lack of leadership come to mind. As poor people, they don’t have the money or tools to build anything but a gigantic shantytown. Many no doubt have the skills to do better, but without tools and raw materials that does them little good. Then there’s the question of what would sustain it; what would it make or trade ? Finally, there’s no one trying to do such a thing; there’s no movement or leader trying to convince them to even try.
What you propose is akin to asking why the downtrodden in Chicago (or some other U.S. place known for machine politics and low-level renttaking) don’t move to Wisconsin to build an entrepreneurial paradise. Lack of funding, lack of organization, lack of leadership, lack of tradable goods, etc.
At this point the main impediments to starting a business are mostly insufficient startup capital/financing and bureaucratic ineptitude, more than corruption. At the official level, there’s historically been a lack of planning and foresight, such as in the northern border areas where maquiladoras set up, which has led to growth beyond the population load that current or even potential urban infrastructure can handle.
Recovery of Tijuana would be like any other kind of planned gentrification of areas suffering urban decay. But there’s enough unexploited real estate elsewhere that I can’t think of a reason anyone would want to pour money into it - compare to Flint or Detroit, I guess.
I believe that economic propsperity of a matter of productivity. American workers for example are the hands down most productive workers in the world. This doesn’t mean we work harder (although there are few countries that could lay claim to a harder working populace) than everyone else, it means that we produce the most value per capita than anyone else and that is largely a factor of our infrastructure, our technology, our level of education and hours worked per capita. Developing this sort of infrastructure takes decades and developing this sort of human capital takes generations. In this sense, American productivity was developed by earlier generations and adds some meat to the nativist argument but the fact of the matter is that almost all of the heavy lifting required to build this nation was done by immigrants and they are vital to our interests. The problem is that our non-Mexican immigrant population is often well educated and highly motivated and are small enough in number that they feel a lot of pressure to assimilate. Our Mexican immigrants are often highly motivated but not particularly well educated and come here in large enough numbers that they live in self sufficient slums and do not feel as much pressure to assimilate.