Mexico & Nafta - November 2006 ( ISSN 1741-444X)
IMMIGRATION: Fox and Calderón criticise Bush over walls
The Mexican government, and president-elect Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, criticised President George W Bush's approval, on 26 October, of the law to build two walls along 700 miles (1,126km) of the US-Mexican border. The Mexican reaction was outspoken and may have shocked US policymakers.
President Vicente Fox said that Bush's action was insulting and short-sighted. Fox added that the US decision showed that the US was "perhaps, unable to see the immigration issue was one that involved two countries." President-elect Calderón, who was on a trip to Canada, said that the US had made "a serious mistake." Calderón also endorsed Fox's claim that the new walls were another Berlin Wall.
The walls are politically symbolic. President Bush's signing of the bill was designed to deliver the maximum possible boost to his Republican party for the mid-term elections on 7 November. Republican congressional leaders emphasised that the walls were the product of a "Republican congress". The Republicans are lagging badly in the opinion polls and are in danger of losing their majorities in both houses of congress.
Despite the politicians' rhetoric on both sides of the border, the Mexican foreign ministry's view is that very little of the walls will actually be built. The foreign ministry's background briefing line is that President Bush had to sign the law mandating the walls to give the Republicans a chance in the imminent mid-term elections, but once these elections are out of the way, the project will be quietly dropped. The law does not commit the US administration to providing money for the walls. President Bush signed a separate law allocating money for "Homeland Security" at the beginning of October, but this money may not necessarily go on the walls.
The Homeland Security budget comes to US$5.4bn. The cost of the walls is budgeted at US$1.2bn. It is almost certain that this US$1.2bn for the walls will not be enough to build all the walls as approved by congress: a 23km border wall in Southern California cost US$138m, or US$9m per 1.5 kilometres. On this basis, the new walls will cost US$7.35bn. There is also considerable doubt among immigration experts that the walls will do much to halt the flow of migrants from Mexico to the US. According to research by the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, only 55% of the illegal immigrants living in the US crossed the border either on foot or by swimming across the Río Bravo: the other 45% came in legally, usually through an airport, with a visa, but decided to remain in the US when their visa expired.
The general assumption is that 500,000 Mexicans get into the US successfully each year. On the Pew figures, around 275,000 of them walk, or swim, across the border, while 225,000 fly in. As US airlines are increasing the number and destinations of their flights to Mexico (Delta recently announced that it would fly to 16 more Mexican destinations this winter), it is going to become easier for Mexicans to fly to the US, negating the whole effect of the walls and extra border controls.
Arguably, the walls will actually increase illegal immigration to the US. A lot of those illegal migrants who fly into the US return to Mexico illegally, by walking back across the border because they know that they can return to their new homes in the US the same way. If these migrants feel that they cannot get in and out of the US as easily, they may stay in the US and arrange visas for their relatives to join them in the US. The relatives will also overstay.
Even before the walls were approved by President Bush, Mexico was considering what further action it could take. On 4 October, the foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez said that his legal advisers were examining the legal options. Mexico is looking particularly at exploiting UN provisions.
On 23 October, the president of the UN's Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Luis Alfonso de Alba, who also heads the Mexican delegation, said that the walls were "strictly speaking a violation of human rights." He said that Mexico wanted to uphold the human right of free movement of persons. The US is an observer on the UNHRC, which replaced the Human Rights Commission earlier this year.
The walls themselves are not popular in the US, according to US opinion polls. What US voters want, according to the most recent opinion polls on the issue, is more US Border Patrol agents (whose hiring will also come out of the US$5.4bn) and the enforcement of laws to deter US companies from hiring illegal immigrants as workers. Voters in the US are much less interested in criminalising illegal migrants working in the US. Currently the federal US authorities tend not to chase after illegal migrants working the US, despite popular fears among such workers of "La Migra".
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The walls' political dimension |
| The Bush government's tough-sounding policies on immigration are a major political risk for the Republicans. In the 2004 elections Bush's campaign attracted record numbers of Hispanics (and according to some psephogical researchers, a majority) to vote Republican. What the mid-term elections will show is whether these voters, who by definition like the smaller-government rhetoric of traditional Republicanism, have been put off the party.
Democrats hope that the huge rallies in the late spring and early summer this year to protest against congressional bills toughening the laws on migrants who have settled in the US mean that Hispanics will return to voting Democrat. Pollsters doubt this and forecast that many Hispanics will not bother to vote. What Hispanics do could be decisive in several close elections. Overall there are 17m Hispanics eligible to vote in the US, 7% more than there were in 2004. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanic electoral turnout increased from 5.5% of the votes cast in 2000 to 6% in 2004. |
Trade unions: On 17 October a group of Mexican trade unions announced that they were taking legal action against a decision by the state of North Carolina to prohibit free collective bargaining by trade unions on behalf of state employees. The Mexican unions are acting under the provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). The Frente Auténtico del Trabajo (FAT) which has 400,000 members, said that this was the first time it had used Nafta against a public sector employer in the US. In the past the FAT has used Nafta successfully in labour disputes with private sector employers in the US.
The United Electrical Workers (UEW), which has 3,000 members employed by the state of North Carolina asked the FAT to get involved in the dispute and to invoke Nafta. The UEW said that Nafta could be invoked because North Carolina did US$6bn worth of trade each year with Mexico.