Poor Mexico, goes the saying, so far from God–and so close to the United States.
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For most of the 150 years since surrendering, at the end of a gun barrel, half of its territory to its northern neighbor, a proud Mexico has kept a healthy distance from the United States. It has been just as distant to the nearly 20 million U.S.-born Mexican-Americans who, despite speaking Spanish and retaining much of Mexican culture, have been viewed with disdain and distrust by inhabitants of their ancestral homeland. Mexicans refer to their distant relatives to the north as pochos–watered-down, Americanized, cultural nomads with no idea of who they are.
Now, as he hosts President Bush this week at his ranch in central Mexico, Mexican President Vicente Fox wants to get closer. He wants to end the family feud with Mexican-Americans and begin an era of greater cooperation with the United States on issues such as drugs, immigration and trade.
All admirable goals. But Fox’s plan for attaining them seems to be losing something in the translation.
Fox believes that being a good neighbor with the United States means helping with chores.
In September, then-President-elect Fox tried to reach out to Mexican-Americans by extending his rule to them. In contending that his office represents Mexicans on both sides of the border, however, he forgot one critical thing: to ask proud Mexican-Americans if they wanted to be adopted.
I imagine that many did not. Even with the poor education that is typically afforded many Mexican-Americans by public schools, we did manage to learn the civics lessons about who is our president and who isn’t.
Next, while hosting a delegation of U.S. senators, Fox offered to feed the insatiable hunger of U.S. companies for cheap labor by working out a deal with the U.S. government to provide a batch of temporary “guest workers.”
And now, the Mexican leader has put in his two centavos about what U.S. immigration policy should look like. During a recent radio address, Fox promised the Mexican people that he would press Bush to make sure that millions of undocumented Mexican immigrants who are living in the U.S. are treated more humanely, and would be given an amnesty leading to legal residency. A bill introduced last week by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) would grant permanent legal residency to any immigrant who has been in the country for five years, clearing the way for as many as 5 million applicants.
While Fox need not worry about re-election (Mexican presidents serve only one, six-year term), he must know that his success in office will be determined in large measure by how well he protects and serves the interests of these expatriates in the United States. Having stumped for votes in Los Angeles and munched tacos with immigrants in New York, Fox has seen up close the emotional investment that Mexican families have in the able-bodied young men who are brave enough to head north, find work and send money back home. That may be why, in one of his first official acts, the new president cracked down on bandidos who routinely rob immigrants returning home for Christmas.
There is also a practical reason for Fox to push for a more lenient immigration policy that includes guest workers, open borders and amnesty.
Guest workers and open borders mean more money sent home, adding to the estimated $10 billion boost to the Mexican economy provided each year by Mexican immigrants living in the U.S. Amnesty means that the millions of Mexican immigrants–who, no one denies, build our homes, clean our hotel rooms, mow our lawns, pick our crops, and even raise our children–could qualify for U.S. educational and health benefits.
Putting these poor souls on our rolls absolves Mother Mexico of her responsibility to provide basic services for some of her own people. It also alleviates the guilt for producing the wage disparities, poverty, and political corruption that forced these throwaways north in the first place. These people deserve better from their own government. And Americans deserve more respect than to have immigration policy dictated to them by a foreign power that, through its own failings, helped produce this miserable situation.
After centuries of the U.S. freely lecturing other countries–including Mexico–about everything from drugs to democracy, turnabout is fair play.
But Fox should remember the one difference between how Americans and Mexicans view their neighbors. For Americans, a good neighbor lends a hand and helps you fix the roof. For Mexicans, a good neighbor minds his own business.
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Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a columnist based in Dallas. E-mail: [email protected]