Mexican Immigration, Part 3: Huntington Examined
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
by Tom Shuford

"We are a nation of immigrants." "We are a welcoming nation." "Family values don't stop at the Rio Grande." "Immigrants do jobs Americans won't do."  With such platitudes President Bush and open borders advocates dismiss fears about rapid change due to uncontrolled immigation. The slogans are meant to smooth acceptance of an unrelenting inflow of humanity determined not by American citizens via legislation enacted by their representatives, but by the lawless choices of businessmen, human smugglers, visa overstayers, and anyone else who can get over the border.

Many Americans are not serene about this. Samuel P. Huntington, a renowned Harvard political scientist, is in their camp. Today ' s heavily Mexican immigration in particular, he believes, is different from past waves of immigration, in six respects: contiguity of the sending and receiving countries, numbers, illegality, regional concentration, persistence and historical presence.

Contiguity

Americans have thought of immigration as symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and more recently perhaps Kennedy Airport. Immigrants arrived in the United States after crossing several thousand miles of ocean. American attitudes towards immigrants and American immigration policies have been and, in considerable measure, still are shaped by this image. ( WHO ARE WE? p222)

Mexican immigration is, in contrast,  " a massive influx of people from a poor, contiguous country " :

This situation is unique for the United States and unique in the world. No other First World country has a land frontier with a Third World country . . . The consequences of migrants crossing two thousand miles of relatively open border rather than two thousand miles of open ocean are immense . . . for the society, people, culture, and economy of the American Southwest. (pp222-223)

COMMENT: We all understand the main " pull " factor in this Third World - First World immigration: American businesses want cheap labor. American politicians are willing to look the other way if the labor happens to be illegal. (1)

The " push " factors are too often ignored. The key " push " factor is " monopoly privilege, " the source of the wealth of Mexico ' s elite. (2) Mexico's super rich own protected monopolies in a variety of goods and services. This has  severe adverse effects on the Mexican economy: high costs, low quality, inefficiency, corrupt governance and anemic job creation. Wall Street Journal Americas correspondent, Mary Anastasia O ' Grady:

Those monopolies are staunchly defended by the old-line Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) in congress . . . monopoly pricing in key sectors - electricity, cement, fixed-line telecommunication services and domestic air services - hampers Mexico's competitiveness in international markets.

* * *

The irony here is that the beneficiaries of such mind-boggling privileges to price as they please - Carlos Slim of Telmex [the telecom monopoly] comes to mind - often use their wealth and lives of leisure to lecture the rest of us about how to help the poor . . . As Reuters reported in November, Mr. Slim " is a frequent guest of Latin American presidents with whom he shares his ideas on how businesses can flourish as the region struggles with high unemployment, weak economies and extreme poverty. " One wonders if competition ever comes up in those fireside chats. ( " Blame Mexico's PRI-Era Monopolies for Slow Growth, " 1-28-05)

Not likely!  Just last month, in a gesture to monopoly privilege and -

. . . in a stunning rejection of economic reality, the Mexican Congress made it illegal to discount the sale of books. By legalizing price collusion among distributors, Congress has ensured that discounters can't move into the market . . . The beneficiaries of the new law will be established book distributors, such as Grupo Sanborns - owned by Mexico's richest man, Carlos Slim [worth $30 billion] - which will no longer have to worry about aggressive retailers driving down prices. ( " How To Break Open the Mexican Pi ñ ata, " O ' Grady, May 12, 2006)

Monopoly privilege (3) is a prescription for Third World status, but the concept does not fully convey Mexico ' s endemic corruption. According a 2005 survey by Berlin-based Transparency International -

... Mexico was one of the top four countries (along with Cameroon, Paraguay and Cambodia), where the largest number of respondents - between 31 percent and 45 percent - answered yes when asked if they or someone in their family had paid any kind of bribe in the last 12 months. A majority of the Mexicans told pollsters the bribes had been directly solicited by authorities. ( " In Mexico, culture of corruption runs deep, " originally published in Dallas Morning News , Dec. 28, 2005)

When a nation beset by monopoly privilege and deeply-rooted corruption shares a 2000-mile border with a prosperous First World country, high levels of emigration are inevitable unless the First World country ' s immigration laws are enforced - at the border and, most importantly, in the interior. Alas, interior enforcement in the United States is essentially nonexistent.

Mexico ' s contiguity with the U. S. also means that its emigrants find it easy to maintain cultural and political ties with Mexico, ties that the Mexican government fosters at every opportunity to increase its political leverage in the U. S.

Numbers

In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s Mexico accounted for 14, 23, and 25 percent of legal immigration. The total percentage is much higher because these numbers do not include illegal immigration:

Jeffrey Passel, a demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center who has studied the issue, said that nationally, 80 to 85 percent of all Mexican immigration since 1990 was undocumented, while among other immigrant groups, a great majority had entered legally. ("Record Immigration" Is Changing the Face of New York Neighborhoods, " New York Times , Jan. 24, 2006)

Huntington:

In the course of four decades [since the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act], the numbers of foreign-born expanded immensely, Asians and Latin Americans replaced Europeans and Canadians, and diversity of source [countries] dramatically gave way to the dominance of one source: Mexico . . .

...Hispanics, twelve percent of the total U. S. population in 2000 . . . became more numerous than blacks. It is estimated they will constitute up to 25 percent of the population by 2040. These changes are driven not just by immigration but also by fertility. In 2002, total fertility rates were estimated at 1.8 for non-Hispanic whites, 2.1 for blacks, and 3.0 for Hispanics . . .

In the mid-nineteenth century, immigration was dominated by English speakers from the British Isles. The pre-World War I immigration was high diversified linguistically, including many speakers of Italian, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, English, German, and Swedish, as well as others. Post-1965 immigration differs from both of these previous waves because now almost half speak a single non-English language . . . (p224)

COMMENT: According to the Wall Street Journal , the fertility rate among Mexican-born women in the U. S. is about 3.5 births per woman ( " Hispanics Gain in Census, " May 10, 2006). This high rate, which is about 1 birth per woman higher than in Mexico itself, is likely related to the automatic citizenship granted to children born in the United States whether the parents entered legally or not. (4) According to the Center for Immigration Studies, as of 2002, ten per cent of all U. S. births were to illegal alien mothers.

In Sum

Editorialists, columnists, commentators are wont to compare Mexican immigration with past waves of immigration. Over time America successfully assimilated earlier immigrants. It will do so again they say.

This is reasoning by false analogy.  Mexican immigration is unprecedented. The United States and Mexico are contiguous. This allows U. S. businesses ready access to cheap illegal labor to which they are now addicted. This contiguity also provides a safety valve for Mexico ' s mostly white elite. They can export a resentful underclass and delay economic reforms that threaten their privileged status.

Mexican immigration is also different because of the numbers coming from a single source country. With so many Spanish-speaking immigrants in the U. S. there is less need to assimilate to a common language and culture.

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We have not exhausted the unique features of Mexican immigration, according to Samuel Huntington. Still to discuss: illegality, regional concentration, persistence and historical presence. (5)

To be continued...

Endnotes

1) Congress ' wink-and-a-nod approach to illegal immigration is illustrated in the recent debate on immigration " reform " in the U. S. Senate. The often-heated debate was centered not on improving enforcement but on how to bestow a patina of legitimacy on a lawless mess that congresses and presidents, past and present, created.

That ' s not how the Senate portrayed itself.  Senators said they were engaged in " comprehensive"reform - as opposed to one-step-at-a-time reform. A "comprehensive" do-everything-at-once approach allow the senators to appea r to care about enforcement, controlling the borders and the like. But the enforcement talk was a cover. Their real aim were amnesty for ten million plus illegal aliens and a tripling of the rate of legal immigration.

The public fell for the " comprehensive " approach in1986.  Congress then delivered on amnesty for 3 million illegal aliens, but failed to follow through on enforcement. (The public had stopped paying attention.)  Will that trick work again?

On May 24, 2006, the Senate passed an amnesty/path-to-citizenship bill 62-36. See how your senator voted. The Senate bill now moves to the House of Representatives which, in stark contrast, passed an enforcement-only bill. No amnesty.  This summer ' s House-Senate Conference will attempt to  " reconcile " the two irreconcilable approaches (amnesty v. enforcement). It  will produce fireworks.

2) Allan Wall, an American citizen living in Mexico, has provided brief bios of Mexico ' s ten billionaires and photos in some cases: " Meet the World ' s Third Richest Man and Nine Other Mexican Billionaires. "

3) Not that the U. S. is free of ineffective monopolies that wield inordinate political influence. Our schooling monopolies have immense clout. Their agents in legislatures derail or enfeeble virtually all efforts to introduce competition. Mexico has a unique variation of monopoly privilege as regards schooling: Teaching positions in Mexico can be bought and sold! See " A Union ' s Grip Stifles Learning: Teaching Posts Inherited, Sold in Mexico ' s Public Schools, " Washington Post , July 14, 2004.

4) NumbersUSA , the major immigration reduction lobbying group, has a short essay (1000 words) on " birthright citizenship. "

5) Notable reviews of WHO ARE WE?, positive and negative: This book stirs strong feelings.

Tom Shuford tomshuford@aol.com is a retired teacher living in Lenoir, North Carolina.