Mexico's Emergence
Will economic reform work? Can democracy wait?
By Rodman D. Griffin

Five years ago, Mexico was a classic example of everything wrong in the developing world: The country's centrally planned economy had collapsed, political leadership was wanting and government inefficiency and corruption were rampant. Many Mexicans believed their country would never recover. Now, suddenly, Mexico has emerged as one of the world's most promising economies. Carlos Salinas de Gortari,. . . .

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Immigration: A Fixture in U.S.-Mexican Relations

Nearly five years ago, the U.S. Congress passed a landmark immigration law in an effort to stem the flow of illegal aliens crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The 1986 law, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), sought to weaken the economic magnet that draws illegal aliens to the United States by prohibiting the employment of people who cannot document their immigration or citizenship status. In a departure from previous policy, which had focused on border enforcement, IRCA was backed up with stiff fines on employers who hire illegal aliens.

Despite early success, a growing number of scholars and policy-makers have recently concluded that the law's deterrent effect was only temporary. “Employer sanctions may have seemed a real barrier at first, but now they are just one more hurdle to overcome,” says Wayne A. Cornelius, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California at San Diego.

Before the law was enacted, apprehensions of people crossing the border reached more than 1.6 million a year, provoking the Reagan administration to declare the border

“The problem,” writes Jorge G. Castãneda, one of Mexico's leading political analysts, “is that both the supply and demand sides of the immigration equation continue to favor greater flows, and the strictures provided by the 1986 law are severely flawed.”

Castãneda says there are “push” and “pull” factors operating beyond the control of either the United States or Mexico: the shift in the United States from a manufacturing to a service economy, which created a demand for low-skilled workers; the aging of the U.S. population; and the growth of the Mexican population. Furthermore, the case can be made that so long as wages are 10 times higher in the United States than in Mexico, mass immigration will continue, regardless of U.S. immigration policy or Mexican economic policies.

[1] See Jorge G. Castãneda and Rafael Alarcon, “Workers are a commodity, too,” The Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1991.

Footnote: 1. See Jorge G. Castãneda and Rafael Alarcon, “Workers are a commodity, too,” The Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1991.