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 Business News | May 2006 
Ex-Clinton Aide Calls for Mexico Marshall Plan
 Bernie Woodall - Reuters
| | Pipes carrying Mexican crude oil for export, shine under the sun at the Dos Bocas terminal in the swampy south eastern state of Tabasco September 20, 2000. The United States could reduce illegal immigration from Mexico by helping its neighbor develop its vast oil resources, the former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton told an industry conference on Wednesday. (Andrew Winning/Reuters) |
The United States could reduce illegal immigration from Mexico by helping its neighbor develop its vast oil resources, the former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton told an industry conference on Wednesday.
Thomas McLarty said the United States should partner with Mexico, and to a lesser degree with Canada, in a "Marshall Plan" effort - named for the U.S. aid offensive for a ravaged Europe after World War Two - that could inspire Mexico's work force to remain at home.
"In Mexico, we need to consider some type of Marshall Plan," McLarty told a Latin American energy conference in a San Diego suburb. McLarty said the three countries could provide $20 billion in development aid over a 10-year period.
"That sounds like a lot of money, and it is," said McLarty, who served as White House chief of staff from 1993 to 1994 and is now a consultant. "Consider that the United States spent $100 billion in Iraq in just this past year. Unless we help out our neighbors to the south, and especially Mexico, we will continue to have this issue of immigration which will hurt our relations."
Mexico's energy minister, Fernando Canales, on Tuesday at the same conference said Mexico will continue to have difficulty developing its energy infrastructure as long as international private investment is outlawed. Mexico's constitution calls for all energy sources and development to be controlled by the national monopoly, PEMEX.
The United States needs to make nuanced efforts to help open Mexican energy development to outsiders, McLarty said.
Mexico ranks 14th in the world in raw energy reserves but imports a quarter of its natural gas from the United States and is a net importer of all petroleum products including gasoline and diesel fuel.
"The hot-button issue on the other side of the border is immigration," McLarty said. "At the heart of that is the flow of workers. If you had more development of the infrastructure in Mexico, more development of the resources there, it would bring more employment in Mexico and keep more of their best and brightest at home."
On Monday, President George W. Bush said he would deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to stem the flow of illegal immigrants, and said those who had already made it across should be offered a chance to become citizens through a temporary guest-worker program.
McLarty is now president of Kissinger McLarty Associates, a consulting firm that includes former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He is also senior adviser to the Carlyle Group.
McLarty said he first heard of the idea from the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. He added that, while groundwork for such an effort can be made, no plan would likely be implemented until a new presidential administration - Republican or Democratic - is in the White House in 2009. |
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