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 Editorials | Issues | April 2007 
Mexico: Prosperity at Least 20 Years Away
 El Universal
Part of the immigration debate is the idea that, fundamentally, the United States´ best hope for ensuring more orderly immigration is if Mexico becomes a stable and prosperous country.
The border between the United States and Mexico - at nearly 2,000 miles - is the longest anywhere between a developed country and a developing one. Average incomes are four times higher on the U.S. side, providing a siren´s call for the ambitious and hardworking.
Imagine: If jobs that paid US$40,000 in the U.S. were worth US$160,000 in Canada, how many Americans would hop in their SUVs and stream northward? That´s what we´re dealing with.
But, how long would it take for Mexico to prosper? Following the rags-to-riches examples of economies such as Chile, South Korea and Taiwan, the answer: At least 20 years, says Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.
INVESTMENT
Mexico´s economy grew a strong 4.8 percent last year, underpinned by oil revenues and a whopping US$23 billion sent home by Mexicans toiling abroad.
The economy "is roughly keeping pace with population, but in order to provide greater opportunity for the people it would need to grow at twice its current rate," Jones says.
In other words, it would need to grow as fast as China.
Mexico would need more jobs and better jobs - and it would need more foreign direct investment, which has been a key to China´s boom.
JOBS
The 20-years figure assumes that, starting now, Mexico does everything right - from fighting corruption to developing industries beyond oil. Job creation is the first step.
President Felipe Calderón "is very clear on the fact that he needs to create not only more jobs in Mexico for the Mexicans not to leave, but also jobs that pay well," says Erika de la Garza, program director of the Latin American Initiative at Rice University´s Baker Institute.
Specifically, the push is developing infrastructure, she says.
Building roads, for example, not only creates jobs but also raises the value of the adjacent land by making it easier for farmers and small manufacturers to get their goods to market.
Regarding infrastructure, it´s in the United States´ interest to do more to help, says Harley Shaiken, director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
"A strong neighbor and ally and a more robust market in Mexico benefits the U.S.," he says.
The best bet would be European Union-style integration - which is what helped transformed Ireland from one of Europe´s poorest countries to one of its richest.
Short of that: "A joint development fund, where the U.S. provides loan guarantees and grants to develop Mexican infrastructure in a way that ultimately benefits the U.S. as well," Shaiken says.
"We´ve got a choice. We can spend billions on a fence or we can spend billions on development," he adds. "The fence won´t work. Development, long term, might."
STABILITY
Business needs a stable legal environment to thrive. It needs government that works.
"In Latin America, most governments think only of their terms. In some countries, it´s only four years. In Mexico, at least it´s six years," de la Garza says.
Calderón has gathered people from academia, non-governmental organizations and the public and private sectors "to think about Mexico in 2020," she says. "It´s not just the next six years. It´s going to take a couple of decades to get Mexico where it needs to be."
In the meantime, Mexico is still poor, and the lure northward is still great.
Jones advocates a guest-worker program to acknowledge that people are going back and forth, as well as a clear path to citizenship.
"We share a long border, we have a large population that is of Mexican origin, and the ties are very strong across the region." he says.
"As long as wages in the United States are so much greater than wages are in Mexico, we´re always going to draw workers from Mexico. So the question is, do you want them to come here in an illegal and undocumented manner, or do you want to facilitate a more legal and structured and responsible manner." |
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