Immigration reform is either right around the corner or may be postponed once again to next year by Congress and the White House, depending on whom you ask.
But one thing is clear for former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge G. Castañeda: It could prove to be a key factor in helping the U.S. move out of the current financial crisis.
"The U.S. is seeking a reorientation of its manufacturing base, and it's not easy to do without cheaper labor and the Mexican industrial base," he said Wednesday.
Castañeda will head to North Texas next week to talk at the University of Texas at Arlington about his latest book, Ex Mex: From Migrants to Immigrants, and about the mutual need in the U.S. and Mexico for immigration reform. He will deliver this year's Center for Mexican American Studies Distinguished Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the UTA library.
Castañeda remains bullish about the prospects of enacting immigration reform sometime during President Barack Obama's administration, despite all the heated and polarizing rhetoric surrounding the issue.
"I don't put much stock in those [anti-immigration] voices," he said. "Obama wouldn't have been elected and health care reform wouldn't have passed if they were the majority."
He believes immigration reform is a crucial component not only in reviving our economy, but also in creating a North American community, similar to the European Union.
It's not a new idea – former Mexican President Vicente Fox mentioned the idea of a free flow of labor and trade on a visit to Dallas in 2000. And the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations issued a trinational report in 2005 in which it proposed the creation of a North American community involving the U.S., Mexico and Canada for enhanced security and prosperity.
Castañeda's vision for this broader relationship goes beyond the North American Free Trade Agreement and involves a free flow of labor and energy, security provisions, integration of currencies, and greater social cohesion.
"NAFTA has run out of steam, and it is not generating jobs in Mexico," he said. "The U.S. and Mexico are further apart in economic development today, and the gap is getting bigger. We cannot leave it to the market alone to solve our issues."
The world's richest man lives in Mexico. Maybe, you Mexican officials should look into how exactly that happened.
The idea of a North American Union modeled on the European Union, with tariff walls around the continent, is something Mexico needs to take up with higher authority: i.e., Beijing. I don't think, however, that America's chief creditor will approve. Maybe it would have been a good idea two decades ago, but that horse left the barn a long time ago.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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26 comments:
"I don't put much stock in those [anti-immigration] voices," he said. "Obama wouldn't have been elected and health care reform wouldn't have passed if they were the majority."
What Castañeda fails to understand is that McCain was just as pro-immigration as Obama and so immigration was not an issue in the 2008 election. Also health care "reform" passed against the wishes of the majority.
Abraham Lincoln prosecuted the Civil War with Greenback dollars, that were issued straight out of the treasury. If he had borrowed the money, there would be no U.S. today. In our current economic scheme, all new money is borrowed into existence. The end game of this financial system is upon us as it reaches its theoretical limits. We merely service the debt, but not the principle. Eventually the interest on the debt becomes mathematically impossible to service, and at that time the International Bankers end game is realized. A people in distress will call out for and grasp for security. But, the real fix is to convert our banking system to Greenback Sovereign Money. The founding fathers had two original sins they kicked down the road to us: 1) Slavery, and 2) Banking. Can we rise to the challenge they gave us? The notion that we would be in this fix is mind boggling, considering that we are producing real wealth at a higher rate than ever in history.
I can understand Mexico's elite wanting the US to function as an relief valve for Mexican fecundity, but how will this be sold in the US? (Aside from calling opponents 'racists'?)
Also health care "reform" passed against the wishes of the majority.
This is disingenuous, to be polite. The vast majority of Americans wanted more of what Obama was offering, not less.
Example:
"86% say insurance should be available to everyone regardless of health history."
"79% say they believe a federal government health insurance option should be available for people to buy."
And the average right-wing prole simply has no clue about Obamacare:
Among Fox News watchers, "72% believed illegal aliens would be covered, 69% were sure abortions were covered and a whopping 75% believe in fictitious “death panels” that would order the euthanizing of the elderly and infirm."
Given all the disinformation by the right-wing media and given the fact that Obamacare completely failed to address the fundamental wishes of Democratic voters, it's amazing that support for the plan is as high as it is.
Who needs socialized medicine anyway? Only losers and weaklings such as junkies, blacks, gays, and Swedes.
America should be for the strong anyway, not weaklings that get sick all the time, and cannot seem to find a megacorp job with all the benefits!
Don't worry, it's all good.
There's a genius plan out there to fix California's economy:
http://www.break.com/index/genius-plan-to-fix-california-economy.html
"Who needs socialized medicine anyway? Only losers and weaklings such as junkies, blacks, gays, and Swedes."
And Norwegians, and Italians, and Danes, and Germans, and Canadians, and Spaniards...
I can understand Mexico's elite wanting the US to function as an relief valve for Mexican fecundity, but how will this be sold in the US? (Aside from calling opponents 'racists'?)
Thats it, thats how it will be sold.
The invention of racism and its 'cure' anti-racism is the weapon the elites have hit upon to get whatever they want in this department.
The same elites have invented the CO2/global warming crisis and offered a 'cure' for that too. That was going to reap all sorts of political/economic goodies. But in this case the invented ill - global warming - hasnt quite taken off like racism did.
And Norwegians, and Italians, and Danes, and Germans, and Canadians, and Spaniards...
Spain is doing awesome - AWESOME!
The countries you listed, "Truth," are, unlike the United States, fortunate enough to lack a large parasitic class.
What Castañeda fails to understand is that McCain was just as pro-immigration as Obama and so immigration was not an issue in the 2008 election.
No, you miss the point. The pro-enforcement crowd couldn't even get the conservative party to pick a nominally pro-enforcement nominee. Our work is truly cut out for us. It seems uncontrolled immigration will be a perpetually second- or third-tier concern until it's too late to do a damn thing about, and given the birth stats - half of all children born to minorities - that may already be the case.
Anonymous said:
"The same elites have invented the CO2/global warming crisis and offered a 'cure' for that too."
How do the elites get the glaciers to melt?
http://www.ecanadanow.com/science/2010/04/11/two-more-glaciers-are-lost-from-glacier-national-park/
Among Fox News watchers, "72% believed illegal aliens would be covered...
Maybe illegal aliens won't be covered. That is they won't be covered until Obama and McCain pass amnesty.
Do you dispute that these newly minted Americans won't be covered? Do you think they should be covered?
The fact is that abomination, the European "Union", doesn't actually have a common external tariff - trade being governed by WTO 'liberal' orthodoxy.
So really the supposed justification for the EU's state fascism and totalitarism is redundant.
The EU does have a tariff; it is just called a Border Adjusted Value Added Tax (BAVAT). Any imported product or service is hit with the BAVAT and any exported product or service is refunded the BAVAT.
The result is that tax policy punishes imports and subsidizes exports. You might have noticed that until last year, Germany exported more goods in monetary terms than any other nation-state. Part of the reason for that, in spite of Germany’s notoriously high wages and benefits (and taxes and regulations) is the BAVAT.
Canada, India, China, Japan, South Korea, heck, even Mexico, all have BAVATs. The only major trading nation that doesn’t protect its domestic market with a BAVAT is the USA. The USA also has the largest trade deficit.
"....how will this be sold in the US? (Aside from calling opponents 'racists'?)
You said it. That's all it took to get Obama elected, and it was a big help in getting ObamaCare passed. It works great, so they might as well keep doing it.
So if Mexico says NAFTA hasn't created jobs in Mexico, and I don't think anyone claims it created jobs in the US (for that to be true, the US would have to have begun making something and selling it to Mexico), then just exactly where has it created jobs? Or did he just admit that "free trade" didn't create jobs at all?
"Anonymous said...
The EU does have a tariff; it is just called a Border Adjusted Value Added Tax (BAVAT). Any imported product or service is hit with the BAVAT and any exported product or service is refunded the BAVAT."
Sounds like a tariff to me, except for the refunding part. Sort of a tariff-plus.
I remember once hearing the MIT economics professor, Lester Thurow (Mike Dukakis's economic advisor - yeah, he was that good!), explaining how wonderful the VAT would be. To me it sounded incredibly onerous - a tax levied on something everytime it changed hands - it would drive up the price of everything, and empower an enormous beuracracy which would be required to enforce it. But, the eminent Dr. Thurow explained, it could be rebated for exports, which would help promote exports. He said this as if he was stating some startling, world-changing fact, the importance of which, few mortals could grasp.
Or, of course, we could just not levy the VAT, and instead have a tariff on imports. That would help promote exports too, at least until other nations erected their own tariff barriers. In any event, the VAT itself has nothing to do with it, and to any external viewer the BAVAT is nothing but a tariff.
It's funny how people cite germany as an example. Thanks to the VAT, germany is an export powerhouse. Of course, even before the VAT, germany was an export powerhouse. The fact that people want to buy german goods might just have more to do with the fact that those goods are made by meticulous germans, rather than with germany's tax regime.
If Mexico was in Europe they wouldn't let it in the union with all the toubles it has. There is practically a warg oing on down there.
No, you miss the point. The pro-enforcement crowd couldn't even get the conservative party to pick a nominally pro-enforcement nominee. Our work is truly cut out for us.
No, it's because the elites who have all the influence are able to consistently get a pro-immigration neocon radical nominated for the GOP. Bush, McCain, and Obama are really not all that different, and this is why.
It seems uncontrolled immigration will be a perpetually second- or third-tier concern until it's too late to do a damn thing about, and given the birth stats - half of all children born to minorities - that may already be the case.
Actually, the CDC has just reported the 2008 birth stats by race. From 2003 to 2006 (the last being the year of Sailer's "Demographic Meltdown"), the non-Hispanic white percentage of births fell by nearly 1% every year. In 2003, it was 56.8%, and in 2006 it was 54.1%. But in 2007, the fall slowed down to a half a percentage point (53.6%), and the just-release birth stats for 2008 revealed that it had almost halted (53.5%). The driver for this was the bursting of the Hispanic baby bubble, and in fact it seems that in 2009, the number of Hispanic births will fall back below a million per year, if the continuing meltdown of California's and Florida's births is any indication.
(And ignore the total fertility rate -- TFR -- stats for everybody but non-Hispanic whites; they are inflated for minorities because the Census consistently underestimates their numbers. The same thing happened in the 1990s, and the CDC had to correct all their nonwhite TFR stats in 2001 after the 2000 Census found six million more minorities than anticipated. This is likely to happen again after the 2010 Census. To give one excellent example, the CDC just reported the TFR for Asians increasing slightly between 2007 and 2008 even though the number of Asian births actually fell slightly. Given that the number of Asian women in the U.S. is soaring at a rate of 3%/yr, this pretty much makes a joke out of their Asian TFR.)
I can understand Mexico's elite wanting the US to function as an relief valve for Mexican fecundity, but how will this be sold in the US? (Aside from calling opponents 'racists'?)
Maybe if Mexicans adopt Spanish fertility rates -- as they seem well on their way to doing (Puerto Ricans and especially Cubans are even further along) -- their demographic threat to us will be pretty much neutralized.
The U.S. has low import tariffs (no bVAT) because it has to be the importer of last resort. The dollar hegemony requires the U.S. to supply dollars to trading nations. The nations sending us their low cost goods do so in order to acquire dollars to buy oil and commondities priced in dollars. Our current immigration invasion is due in part to U.S. based international bankers busting out the Mexican economy (Peso crises). Nafta also did them in by pushing peasant farmers off thier land. The peasants were supposed to go to the maquiladoras, but China short circuited that plan. Thanks Bill Clinton. Thanks banking and business elite for having American Citizen's needs at heart.
Mexican fertility in the US depends on continued subsidies - not just the obvious payouts like WIC, but the subtler ones like the huge amounts of money thrown at special ed students, especially in CA. White fertility, on the other hand, is primarily impacted by whether or not white women can come up with something else to do that seems like a better idea than having babies. Most of the "something better" that white women come up with to do is going to dry up exactly when the subsidies to low rent, single mother childrearing dry up. As the Great Depression 2.0 rolls on, Mexican fertility will continue to fall but white fertility will go up.
White fertility fell quite a bit during the Great Depression.
If one adopts a "living constitution" and the 2nd, and 10th amendments as irrelevant, why not the 14th?
Kick out all illegals, anchor babies, and their descendants, and there is more money to go around for health care, and other things.
Free, no expenses spared, health care for say, White women regarding cervical or breast cancer. All it takes is kicking illegals out. Someone will make that winning argument.
White fertility fell quite a bit during the Great Depression.
Yeah, Whiskey, back when you might have been able to get a girl.
Castañeda's vision for this broader relationship goes beyond the North American Free Trade Agreement and involves a free flow of labor and energy, security provisions, integration of currencies, and greater social cohesion.
Beyond satire.
Yeah! We need greater "cohesion" with the totally corrupt, imploding, chaotic, vicious gangster state south of the border!
Let's get married, honey!
...
DO YOU HAVE NO SENSE OF SHAME, SENOR CASTENADA?
Is there a Spanish word for "embarrassment"? Mexicans don't exhibit any sense of shame. I mean, NONE. Follow this cultural trait back to the Moorish conquest of Spain. The Arabs simply DO NOT DO SHAME in front of outgroups. Never apologize! And never wear short pants in the summer!
"Whiskey said...
White fertility fell quite a bit during the Great Depression.
If one adopts a "living constitution" and the 2nd, and 10th amendments as irrelevant, why not the 14th?"
Good point (you do occasionally make them). I hope that state governments start deciding for themselves what is and is not constitutional.
DO YOU HAVE NO SENSE OF SHAME, SENOR CASTENADA?
Is there a Spanish word for "embarrassment"?
Yes there is, but it means "the state of being pregnant (embarazada)."
The Spanish word for embarrassment is verguenza.
If one adopts a "living constitution" and the 2nd, and 10th amendments as irrelevant, why not the 14th?
There's some similarities between the 2nd and 14th Amendments. Both have strange clauses we're not always quite sure what to do with: "a well-regulated miltia" and "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
And both have been superceded, to a degree, by the completely unexpected. We most certainly do not interpret "the right to bear arms" to include M249s, hand grenades, or nuclear warheads, even though all could certainly be considered "arms." So why should we interpret the 14th Amendment to cover illegal immigrants? ALL rights in the Constitution appear to be limited to some degree. Freedom of religion? That doesn't mean you can smoke peyote or marry 5 women. Freedom of speech? It does not cover threats of physical harm. Freedom of assembly? Not if you're a mob. And so on...
The Constitution, as they say, is not a suicide pact.
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