My sister and I had this conversation last night. She insists that security, economic, and a huge portion of the American immigration problem would be solved if Mexico was made the 51 state.
Her argument in a nutshell:
The US spends billions (no concrete figure I could find) every year in patrolling a 2,000+ mile border with Mexico, and we still fail to keep our more than 1 in 4 from crossing over. States pay more in hundreds of millions every year for health care for illegal. The INS spends over a billion a year in agents and processing to send the illegal we do find, back to Mexico.
If Mexico were a state, the border patrol goes from 2,000 miles to just under 900. The minimum wage would now apply to all Mexican citizens, so no more paying an immigrant less to do the job that could go to an out of work American. The Mexican economy recently hit the trillion dollar class, and all that is now pumped into the country as a whole. The corruption and brutal law that is still part of many Mexicans lives would slowly be replaced with less corrupt and brutal American justice. Giving the “little people” a better chance.
Because instead of paying the healthcare for millions of illegal immigrants, you’ve suddenly started paying for the healthcare of tens of millions of legal citizens. And the minimum wage laws would devastate not only entire industries in the US which require cheap, illegal immigration to survive, but large portions of the Mexican economy who depend on their comparative advantage in labour. And the relative trickle of border crossings we have now would turn into a full on flood.
In short, your proposing to fix a system by making in even more extreme.
It won’t happen unless it would provide some significant advantage for the current 50 states. Does Mexico have anything that we want? The land itself is mostly suitable for ranching, but not for intensive agriculture. It has oil, I don’t know how much. Also, what would be the implications for American politics of having a (most likely) new blue state with a population of 106 million? Are you democrats salivating at the thought?
We currently only have to keep out those who live close enough to the border to try to cross it, and whatever we currently spend to support them only applies to those who make it across. If we’re spending that much money supporting them when they’re not supposed to be here, we’d have to spend that much money per capita for the entire population of the country; plus, anybody who wanted to come work in the what is currently the U.S. could do so for the cost of a bus ride, and not have to worry about crossing the border, since they’d already be across it, with no worries about being deported. Plus, we’d be obligated to raise the standard of living for their entire country up to first-world status, and that would be a bit spendy.
Absorbing what amounts to a third world country into our economy? Your sister’s idea may be the single dumbest thing I’ve read on SDMB. And I’ve read some mighty dumb things.
I’m worried that you seem to think the USA just has to make this decision by itself, and then absorb Mexico. How about Mexicans get a say in it, maybe? Like Kimstu said, there isn’t likely to be huge approval to give up being a country and governing themselves; while they’re going to get a large cash flow in, they’re also going to have their votes watered down with everyone else’s. The plan probably has more problems than benefits, but yeah, what seems more worrying to me is that you’re acting as though the USA could just “decide” this and it would be done.
No, there isn’t significant interest in becoming a US state…especially by those in actual power (it tends to shift around). I suppose there might be SOME interest by the poor but they really have no say.
Its a pretty bad idea overall. The biggest thing I can think of off the top of my head would be the culture shock from a corruption standpoint. Look at what Germany went through when it unified between East and West Germany…and then add in the language thing. It would be that bad or worse.
Besides, if the US doesn’t want Mexico to become part of the Union (to the OP, Mexico is broken up into several ‘states’ or provinces…its not one large mass. IF it joined the Union, it would join as a series of states IMO, not just one. THAT would be real chaos if you tried to do it your way), and Mexico doesn’t want to join the Union…well, you aren’t going to get any traction anywhere is what I’m getting at if no one wants it.
Well, it won’t happen. Mexico (The United Mexican States) is already 31 states in a federation. It has a population of about a third of the U.S.'s. The Americans would not want it as it would have a huge effect on American politics.
Next, the Mexicans are a unique, if not homogeneous, people. They have their own language, customs and political culture. Would they accept the concept of their president being reelected? Would American be willing to give up the second term?
The Americans do not to absorb them. The Mexicans do not want to be absorbed.
Would it be neat if we could pull it off? Sure, way cool. Maybe we could have done it in '47, but we lost the chance.
There’s also the problem of massive graft and corruption within the Mexican industries and government. This would be a massive headache that the US government would then be forced to resolve.
That wasn’t the intenet of the debate. Obvously we had have to put aside the notition that one; the US would do such a thing, and two, that Mexico would go for it. I wish my sis visited here, she could probably frame the debate better than I did.
Perhaps, but consider this;
GDP Mexico 1.06 Trillon
GDP California 1.4 trillion
GDP US - 11 trillion
Mexico Labor force - 34 million. 58% of which is in the service industry, which when you consider a merger, probably wouldnt change at all.
US Labor force - 147 million
While the idea may be silly, econmically is it really out of reach?
Of course it would be relevant. Some of the posts I’ve read have shown quite a bit of ignorance about Mexico. A lot, if not most of the opinions seemed to be based on Google searches and not first hand knowledge.
That is totally false.
Where do you think most of the fresh vegetables sold in the US during the winter come from?
And the “third world” country happens to posess the 9th largest economy in the world.
JThunder: Have you seen the Mexican infrastructure?
What’s more, do you have any idea what it would cost to bring the entire friggin’ country of Mexico up to the US clean air and clean water standards, even in the long term? That might question might not occur to someone who hasn’t actually seen what a mess some places are down there.
Part of it, yes. Earlier, I mentioned the colossal problems involved in combatting graft and corruption there, but the infrastructure problem would be an issue too.
My point is that I don’t think one necessarily needs to spend two weeks seeing these things to realize what huge problems they would present. Even from a distance, they’re pretty darned daunting. And many of the statistics (e.g. population density) are intimidating enough without actually having to see the people up close.
Yes but think of the employment opportunities it would create. If they spent on what they spent on Iraq on improving the infrastructure it would create untold benefits all across the board. Plus they wouldn’t have to kill anyone to do it (improve the infrastructure not annex the country).
I think the Mexicans might have something to say about this. Most nations like their sovereignty.
Part of the reason why we don’t seriously entertain this idea is that Mexico is like a colony that we don’t have to spend much money to rule. We can buy their resources, use their labor, and sell them our goods (likely made with their resources and labor) without having to worry about things like standard of living or keeping voters happy. Colonialism isn’t about might, it’s about markets. And we’ve already got the markets wrapped up.
If you think Mexico isn’t a part of our economy, you are strongly deluded. We could not extricate Mexico from our economy if we tried. The trick is, they aren’t a fair part of our economy.
Anyway, other problems I can see is that Mexico has it’s own set of complications we wouldn’t know where to begin with. There are many more indigenous people in Mexico. There are still large numbers of people who don’t speak Spanish- they speak Mayan languages. A lot of Mexico’s states are only loosely affiliated and only became part of the country in the later parts of the last century. The indigenous people can sometimes get rebellious towards a government they only half-recognize.
Mexico also has it’s own illegal immigrant problem. People from Central America are streaming in to Mexico, which doesn’t really have a good place for them. Believe it or not, for a lot of people Mexico is an awesome place to be compared to their home countries. Whole criminal enterprises have sprung up to prey on these immigrants. We wouldn’t be solving the illegal immigrant problem, we’d just be pushing it south a bit. And our new border countries are a lot more fucked up than Mexico- laregy because of our tendancy to fuck around with every Central American nation’s government. Guatemalans arn’t to saguine about their government, but they arn’t too in to Uncle Sam either. And lots of them are plenty armed and still remember death squads that we had a part of. Mexico stands between us and a lot of trouble.