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 Editorials | Opinions | May 2007 
Invest in Mexico, Give Migrants Choice
 Leon Krauze - Washington Post
Migrants don’t migrate for the fun of it. There is no pleasure in migration. Migrants - or at least Mexican migrants - leave their countries of origin because they have no real choice. Naturally, this is primarily that country’s fault.
Many of the angry comments I received to my last post in PostGlobal were directed at the Mexican government’s inability to create enough jobs inside our own borders to prevent immigration into the United States. Needless to say, such criticism has a point. Rural development in Mexico improves slowly and the country’s large urban centers, which suffered their own excessive immigration for decades, do not offer enough jobs to sustain such massive populations. Still, complaining about Mexico’s troubles will do nothing to help alleviate them.
When it comes to thinking of a real solution, I completely agree with Daoud Kuttab. The only long-term answer for Third World-First World migration is investment. Let me make an open invitation to all PostGlobal readers to come to Michoacán, Oaxaca and Puebla, three of Mexico’s most migration-oriented states. Anyone who visits - really visits - these places will understand how big a difference an ambitious aid and investment program could make.
If the United States followed the European Union’s example and, through strict guidelines, helped establish a sort of meta-national structure of support with Mexico, immigration would surely begin to decline. The Mexican government - the apparent bete noire of many of the people who answered my previous post - would be held accountable by the U.S., the international community and, most important of all, the Mexican people themselves, who have matured enormously since the times of the PRI. |
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