I’m Not The Only One

Yeah, I figured that headline would catch your attention.

How does legalizing drugs keep Mexicans from  illegally crossing our borders, or even encourage those already in the U.S. to go back where they came from?  To answer that  question, we first have to understand why they’re leaving, and it isn’t just because of a lack of economic opportunity.

Mexicans are leaving their country in droves because of the Mexican Drug War, which is in reality the United States imposing its will on Mexico to find and capture producers and traffickers of illegal drugs.   Our neighbor to the south is literally engaged in a civil war between the Mexican government and Mexican drug cartels. In 2005 the Pew Hispanic Center, a division of the Pew Research Center, released the results of a poll which indicated that 40% of Mexicans stated they would come to the United States if they had the means and opportunity to do so, and 20% said they would come to the U.S. illegally.  I’ve heard this poll quoted over and over in news stories regarding immigration (almost all immigration stories involve Mexicans, as if all illegal aliens were from Mexico).  Has anyone ever asked why so many people are tempted to leave their homeland?  Has anyone ever asked what the hell is going on in Mexico that so many Mexicans feel this way?

Of course not, because the only context in which think about Mexicans is how to keep them from illegally crossing the border into this country.  It was one thing when Mexicans were coming into the U.S. looking for work.  Nowadays Mexicans are coming to the U.S. not only for economic opportunities but to escape from the violent byproduct of the civil war between the Mexican government and the Mexican drug cartels.  How did it come to this?

Because of its strategic location (next to the world’s largest consumer of illicit narcotics), Mexicans have always played a crucial role in making sure we Americans got our drugs, starting with Prohibition in the 1920s and even acting as middlemen for the Colombian cartels in the 70s and 80s.  But this face-off between the Mexican government and their homegrown criminal organizations began in 2006 when Mexican President Felipe Calderon sent 6,500 federal troops to the state of Michoacan to fight La Familia Mochoacana, the local cartel there.

Because of the profits made from selling drugs to Americans, these cartels are able to purchase pistols, semi-automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, body armor, Kevlar helmets and other equipment that often rival the resources of the Mexican government.  The end result is that even as Mexico increases the number of troops it uses to fight these cartels, little success is actually made in defeating them.

There is also the issue of corruption and bribery within the Mexican military as well all levels of Mexican law enforcement.  Mexico is certainly not as wealthy as the United States, and therefore cannot pay their agents very much.  So when the wealthy cartel offers them a “second salary” from the cartel as well as the opportunity to remain on the police or military payroll without fear of being killed by the cartels, most soldiers and agents cannot say no.

Soldiers and officers have been found numerous times to have worked as bodyguards for the cartels.  The cartels even enlist some of their members with no arrest records to run for public office in Mexico, bankrolling their political campaigns and often being elected.  Of course, these cartels wouldn’t be able to infiltrate the government if it were not for the insatiable appetites of Americans for drugs.

In case you were wondering, Mexico is home to eight different drug cartels, all of whom have laid claim to valuable real estate on the Mexican side of the U.S. border and occasionally fight each other over turf, as more border ownership obviously leads to increased access to the very lucrative U.S. drug market.  Some cartels have long-standing rivalries with each other which frequently leads to gun battles in the streets occasionally cooled down by temporary alliances between individual cartels in an effort to increase profits and combat their common enemy, the Mexican government.

In 2008, President George W. Bush introduced the Merida Initiative, a program in which U.S. taxpayer money is given to Mexico and a few other countries in Central America and the Caribbean for the purposes of beefing up those countries’ efforts in eradicating the drug cartels there.  In its first year, the Merida Initiative gave $400 million of its $465 million budget to Mexico to give bigger salaries to law enforcement agents (to decrease acceptance of bribes) and purchase equipment (surveillance technology, computers, humvees, aircraft, etc.) and weapons.  Most of this money never leaves the U.S., as American defense contractors manufacture the weapons and equipment destined for use by the Mexican military.  In 2009, Congress approved $300 million for Mexico and is scheduled to approve $420 million for Mexico this year.  The Mexican government has already requested $450 million for 2011.  The increased funding only further obligates Mexico to continue to confront the drug cartels, who combined may have more funds than the Mexican government, resulting in more soldier, police and civilian deaths.  To date Calderon has spent over $US7 billion in Mexican and American taxpayer money to combat the cartels.

Today, Mexico has committed 45,000 troops and police agents to combat the cartels, and the cartels continue to thrive.  Many of the weapons given by the U.S. often end up in the hands of the cartels either through bribing or killing Mexican soldiers and police officers.  Little to no commercial activity can actually take place in a battlezone, which is what many parts of northern Mexico have become.  With factories leaving Mexico for safer countries, there are ever fewer employment opportunities for Mexicans, which only further encourages increased illegal immigration into the U.S., especially if the immigrants blame the U.S. for the downward spiral of their communities.

Since getting American to stop using illegal drugs is impossible (you could give drug offenders the death penalty and they’d still buy and sell drugs!), the only logical solution is to legalize drugs, stop giving hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese credit to Mexico, and watch either drug production begin domestically (translating into increased economic opportunity for Americans and a source of tax revenue for the federal government), the start of legalized drug production in Mexico (translating into a great reduction of violence as well as increased economic opportunity for Mexicans and a source of tax revenue for the Mexican government), or both.  Either way fewer Mexicans will be sneaking past our porous border.  Some Mexicans in the U.S. may even go back.

So while Arizona freaks out and the Minutemen keep ranting about the federal government, here’s a real solution to curb Mexican immigration, both legal and illegal.  Not saying whether Mexican immigration is good or bad, just saying that if you want to reduce it, here’s an idea that could actually work.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Government Incompetence, Immigration, The War on Drugs, Government Corruption, Latin America, Government Interference. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.