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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2006 
U.S. Will Need More Mexican Workers, Fox Says
 Kevin G. Hall - Knight Ridder
| | Mexico's president, Vicente Fox, is interviewed by Knight Ridder's Kevin G. Hall. |
In an interview Wednesday, Mexican President Vicente Fox said that in a few years the United States may be begging Mexico for the very workers it's now trying to keep out by building a wall along the border.
With the looming retirement from the work force of the U.S. baby-boom generation, and with Mexico's population growth rate declining, immigration from Mexico will slow just as demand for workers in the United States will be growing, he said in an interview aboard his presidential jet.
"I am absolutely convinced that by 2010, the United States will have a great demand for workers and laborers to sustain its economy and to sustain its population of retirees and pensioners," the president said. "And in that very year, Mexico will need its young people to help its own economy and to attend to its own retirees."
Demographic experts said Fox was at least partly right. The rate of Mexico's population growth has slowed, from 1.4 percent annually in 2000 to 0.99 percent today. That means fewer Mexicans will be joining the work force in the future, making it easier for them to find work in their own country.
But the pull of jobs in the United States still might draw Mexicans across the border, especially as the wave of some 76 million baby boomers — those born from 1946 to 1964 — begins reaching retirement age in 2011.
"Just because there are fewer people coming into the work force, you can still have lots of people who want to leave and go abroad," said Philip Martin, an agricultural economist and expert on immigrant labor at the University of California, Davis.
When Fox took office in 2000, he vowed to make an immigration accord with the United States a top priority, and he thought he had a likely partner in President Bush, who took office less than two months later. But the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks derailed Bush's plans for an immigration accord as the U.S. adopted a tough, national-security view of all border issues.
Interview with Mexican President Vicente Fox by Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder Newspapers, aboard the Presidente Juarez on Feb. 27, 2006
Q: How would you judge your efforts to channel resources to high emigration states, and what challenges remain for your successor?
A: High emigration states are all over the country, there is no program that dedicates funds to just one community to resolve the problems of that community. What we have very clear in mind and is a strategy with great commitment is ensuring income for the people in the Mexican countryside and ensuring jobs, productive occupations and better salaries for people in the cities.
In both cases, we have advanced. I won’t say we have resolved it, but in both cases we have advanced. If you see the indicators, they have reduced in an important matter the divide between the income a family in the countryside has and the income of a family in the city. On the other hand, looking at the indicators, we can affirm that the real salary of all the workers in Mexico has recovered and has grown in real terms. And with respect to the year 2005, the generation of new jobs was in the ballpark of 750,000, levels we have not seen in a long time. This year we are going for another 750,000 jobs.
The last factor that has to do with the immigration theme is the growth of the Mexican population. In the years 2000 to 2005, the level of growth in Mexico was reduced to below 1 percent, that’s to say 0.99 percent. In 2000, the population growth rate was 1.4 percent. So, we are going at a good pace, reducing the population growth, which signifies that the demographic (distortion) hump is at the point of ending.
Mexico is about to stop being a country of the young. It will very quickly convert to an adult population. I am absolutely convinced that by the year 2010, the United States will have a great demand for workers and labor to sustain its economy and to sustain its population of retired and pensioned. For that very year, Mexico will need that youth to help its own economy and to attend to its own retirees.
Q: One of the achievements in the first three years of your administration was the capture of drug kingpins. The last few years, “cartelitos” – or mini-cartels -- have stepped up and drug-related violence has grown. What’s at the root of this problem and do you or your successor combat it?
A: For us, in the strategic analysis it’s clear that the success has been the cause. Having success in detaining the large kingpins – we have put dozens of large bosses in jail had opened spaces that second-level players are trying to occupy. So they fight to the death to gain leadership. Second point: Consumption of drugs in Mexico has grown and the efficiency of the surveillance at the border to reduce the crossing of drugs into the United States has meant that the mafias, the cartels, on one side are pushing cheap drugs in the Mexican market and on the other hand are in a frontal war to control the key points, as is the case in Acapulco, Guerrero, as is the case in Cancun, Quintana Roo, as is the case of Tijuana and as is the case in Sinaloa, a producer state for drugs.
We are facing a war of repositioning ranks, for control of markets and what’s important, and it’s our strategy, is to redouble our efforts, create more budget and ratchet up the pressure and the war against the cartels, strongly coordinate the three levels of government to confront the drug traffickers. This was the responsibility just of the federal government, now we share that responsibility with local governments and this multiplies our forces, the number of police we have, it multiplies the number of opportunities to face the cartels. That’s what we have to do, continue with a zero tolerance, continue with a strong force and presence of the Mexican state against the cartels. And we will win this war, I don’t doubt in the least that we will win.
Q: After five years, what do you think is your greatest accomplishment and what’s the one thing you wish you wouldn’t have had to leave to your successor?
A: The main actors in a democracy are the very citizens. They are the ones who have the merit and the achievement. I would say one of them is having transitioned to a consolidated democracy without violence, without instability and without problems. Mexico has 10 full years of political, economic and social stability -- to have opened completely to the freedom of information and the freedom of communication. Here the very mediums of communications are the very ones that ratify this absolute freedom that they have. They have stopped being controlled by the government, they have stopped being bought off by the government and today they act in complete freedom. So, I would say this transition to a democratic presidency and to freedom of speech is one of the great achievements in Mexico.
In economic matters, today we have better fundamentals than we ever have in our history. The country risk is below 100 points, foreign reserves are higher than the foreign debt, we have a zero-deficit budget, inflation and interest rates equivalent to those of our top trading partner, the United States, and in 2005 inflation in Mexico was less than inflation in the United States.
And all of this has given us a great capital market, which today provides abundant resources to the economy, in long-term rates of up to 30 years, at fixed rates and in Mexican pesos. What better certainty, confidence and guaranty for an investor than that? What has given us that? This has given us the highest investment in our history in energy, in highway and communications infrastructure and in housing.
Today, Mexico has a powerful domestic market, through a middle class that has grown and that is consuming. And, the Mexican economy now runs on two motors. One is through the commercial balance, which is larger than all of Latin America together – $435 billion last year -- and through the motor of domestic consumption, where the washing machines, the televisions, computers, telephones have grown in extraordinary fashion. In 2000, there were 14 million telephones in the country, today this year we will approach 70,000 telephones (cell and fixed).
Q: Nobody doubts that your administration has achieved much, but the Mexican people aren’t as confident. Front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, using a dialogue of the past, has remained anchored in first place in opinion polls for two years. Why does the public support his message?
A: Populism and demagoguery are strategies and weapons of some politicians. Responsibility and good economic management are the weapons of other politicians, which is our case. During the first four years of my government, we reduced extreme poverty by 30 percent, there still remains 70 percent as a challenge. There is always space for demagoguery, tricks and populism like we are seeing, what I can affirm is that according to the polls, many if not all of them, the president of the Republic has 70 percent of support and 70 percent in agreement with the way we are governing. But I must again clarify that not everything is resolved in this country, many challenges remain, poverty, investment etc.
Q: Were there too many expectations that this government could solve everything in six years?
A: When you inherit what it fell to me to inherit, you have to devote lots of time to reconstruction, to reengineering within your government. I’ve spent five years building institutions, eliminating areas of government that aren’t working, I’ve made this a government of total quality management. In six years we’ll have the entire government certified with ISO 9000, internationally. I ask what other government in the world is completely certified under ISO 9000? This takes time achieving, but we’ve achieved it. We have a law for transparency and access to information, which only highly democratic governments commit to and put into operation, Mexico has it. We have a career civil service law which guarantees public servants that are professional and efficient, trained.
This is the fundamental work -- the economy, the financial system and government. The social work is the most important work in this government. We have three institutions that are exemplary and are being copied in different countries of the world. One is the program for combating poverty, called Opportunities. All families that are in extreme poverty or were in extreme poverty, and all families that are in moderate poverty, are within this program. And it’s allowed them to overcome this problem of extreme poverty. Another is the biggest housing program ever in the country, 750,000 homes are going to be built this year. That’s four times, or 400 percent, of what was built by the previous government.
The popular insurance policy, a policy for high medical expenses for the poor families, 5 million families have a high-medical costs policy, which allows them confront medical illnesses without any cost, and these are the 5 million poorest families in the country. Today they have guaranteed access to a medical system of quality.
And in education, the program Encyclomedia, which is the technology of information in the 21st classroom, offered in all schools across the country. It is an electronic blackboard, digitalized, computerized and connected to the internet that the very students operate, and its provoking a revolutionary change within the education system. With this, our children aged nine and 10 are going to learn English, dominate English, and learn computing and dominate information technology, and they will learn culture, music, art, to develop the emotional part of their brain. This will be in all schools, in the indigenous communities, in the rural communities and in the last Rincon of the country.
Q: Are you disappointed that the bilateral agenda fell so far after 9-11, did it make your agenda a bit of a lost cause?
A: I think there are things humans can fix and in our hands and that is obligation to fix them. But there are things that are out of the control of one who governs, Sept 11 was one one of things outside the control of one who governs and changed the priorities and changed the strategy and changed the way of governing. The United States had to make security it’s highest priority, had to make terrorism its biggest commitment to fight. All democratic countries of the world are now doing it too. This is what happened. We have adjusted to the new time. But I can affirm that the friendship and personal relationship I have with President Bush remains as good as ever. Number two, the relationship between Mexico and the United States is stronger than ever. It is very complex relationship, it’s a relationship that has many problems, it is a relationship we must tend to every day, and we do. So, here you can say ‘Well, there wasn’t an immigration agreement.’ Yes we have sought an immigration accord now for 80 years, it hasn’t been reached in 80 years.
However, today we are closer than ever, because for the first time it is in the (U.S.) Congress, the initiative that lays out what we want to see in a migration agreement. So it is under debate, the deputies and senators are debating this initiative, which to me is a good signal, which to me gives good and sustained hopes that if we are intelligent and show talent in this decision that the United States will take, surely we will have an immigration accord and surely this accord will be to the benefit of both countries and both economies and our relationship.
Q: Can there be such an accord if AMLO comes to power? If he follows the PRI foreign policy?
A: I can’t give an opinion about the candidates and the electoral process, what can I say is that Mexico needs to sustain its public policies over a long term, beyond one or two or three governments so that we can really take advantage of the growth rates we really want for Mexico. And this is the same for all of Latin America. To reinvent the wheel every third day and constantly changing public policies, that’s why Latin America has always lagged behind. And for that reason the best way to correct it is as Mexico has done over the past 10 years. It has sustained the public policies on the economy for two administrations of two different political parties, and the results are there for anyone to see. The Mexican economy has grown from $310 billion in 1995 to $755 billion in 2005. This is more than double the growth, per capita income has gone from $3,100 to more than $7,000 during this 10-year period.
Extreme poverty has been reduced by more than 40 percent over the decade. So, Mexico is on the right road, Mexico is reducing poverty, better distributing income but what we need is permanence for public policies so we can reach our goals as fast as possible. |
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