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 Editorials | Opinions | August 2007 
Statehood for Mexico?
 Mike Rosen - RockyMountainNews.com
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Every now and then a caller to my radio show will come up with the "original" idea that we can solve all of our immigration problems - legal and illegal - with Mexico by simply making it the 51st state in the union.
The idea is no more original today, nor any better, than when I first heard it years ago.
It's not even clear whether most Mexicans would be flattered or insulted at that proposition. I've been to Mexico many times on business and pleasure. I like the country and I've liked most Mexicans I've encountered. (I've never met Subcomandante Marcos, the militant, ski-masked Zapatista rebel in the jungles of Chiapas.) But I like Mexico precisely because it's a foreign country, different from the United States in many ways.
Judging from the behavior of the millions of Mexican immigrants who have enthusiastically waved their national flag while participating in festivals and political demonstrations in the streets of U.S. cities in recent years, it would appear that they are proud of their culture, their history and their sovereignty. I haven't seen any opinion polls on the question lately, but my guess is that most Mexicans in Mexico don't want to become the 51st star on the American flag. In any event, we couldn't just annex the country; it would have to want statehood.
If they did, Mexicans might prefer to become the 51st through 81st states. Mexico is a federal republic - officially, the United Mexican States. It's a federation of 31 individual states, each with its own political and cultural identity, like the United States of America. They might not like being lumped into one state any more than Texans might like being thrown in with New Yorkers.
If Mexico were to become the 51st state, it would be by far the largest, covering 761,000 square miles, three times the size of Texas. The newly minted state of Mexico would also dominate American politics. Its population of 110 million is more than a third of the total population of our current 50 states.
Here's how that would affect the political calculus: The U.S. population would grow to more than 400 million. Mexico would get two of 102 Senate seats (or 62 of the 162 Senate seats if each of the 31 Mexican states were admitted).
Seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are awarded to states based on their relative populations. If we were to maintain the current number of 435 seats in the House, they'd have to be reapportioned among the states, such that the new state of Mexico would get 110 of them while California's House delegation would drop from 53 down to 38. In presidential elections, Mexico would get 112 Electoral College votes out of 539. California, now with 55, would be cut to 40.
Incorporating Mexico into the United States presents some other potential problems, including a massive transfer of income from current U.S. taxpayers to Mexico. Mexican citizens would qualify for the smorgasbord of federal entitlement programs from health care to Social Security to food stamps, and state funding for everything from schools to highways.
Per capita GDP in Mexico is only about $10,000, compared to $44,000 for the United States. Education levels and productivity are much lower in Mexico. Forty percent of the population falls below Mexico's poverty line; a much higher percentage would fall below the U.S. poverty line. On the plus side, Mexico does have a lot of oil. It exports 2.3 million barrels a day. But PEMEX is currently owned by the Mexican government. It might want to keep it.
I can't even contemplate what the imposition of U.S. minimum wage laws would do to the Mexican economy.
Advocates of statehood for Mexico might want to take some of this into consideration.
Mike Rosen can be reached by email at mikerosen@850koa.com. |
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