Our Great Illegal Immigration Mythologies. Part One Victor Davis Hanson
https://victorhanson.com/our-great-illegal-immigration-mythologies-part-one/
Myth #1: Mexico is our “partner.”
Joe Biden has recently praised President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as working hand-in-glove with him to alleviate the influx of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. from his country. In fact, Obrador is one of the main reasons there have been over seven million illegal entries since Biden took office. Obrador wants illegal immigration. He said as much when he giddily bragged that 40 million of his own countrymen had fled to the U.S. Would not a balanced leader regret the loss of over 30 percent of his current population? He urged such expatriates to vote Democratic, a direct interference in the internal affairs of the United States but ignored by the media since it has found such meddling useful. And why Obrador’s interference in our affairs? Because it is to Mexico’s advantage to destroy the border. Why so? Let us count the ways:
1) Mexico receives an astounding $60 billion in remittances from its citizens and residents in the U.S.—the largest source of its foreign exchange. Consider that weird statistic: Mexico’s main export is not food, oil, natural gas—but its own people, as in exporting human beings! Note especially that our local, state, and federal governments subsidize much of these remittances. Americans provide housing/education/legal/food/healthcare entitlements to illegal immigrants to free up their cash to send back to Mexico. Could we not at least tax the $60 billion at 10 percent? Or at least prohibit those on U.S. public assistance from sending money back to Mexico?
2) Mexican intellectuals and academics talk nonstop of the lost lands stolen by Yanquis, especially in the 1846–48 Mexican War. In their view, demography is doing what the 19th century did in reverse: reclaiming Aztlán by destroying the border. Such irredentism is encouraged by Mexico.
3) Mexico City either cannot or will not alleviate the condition of the poor of southern Mexico, especially the indigenous people of Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Michoacán. Rather than marching on Mexico City, the oppressed flee, in safety-valve fashion, to the U.S. Once here, Mexico ceases to be seen as the oppressive, corrupt, and cynical government that drove them out. Instead, hatred is replaced by nostalgia and a fond memory of a former life—a fantasy that blooms among the expatriate population the longer it is free from the reality of living in Mexico. So instead of demanding social change, the oppressed fleeing to the U.S. send back money to their families and friends, thereby hurt the U.S. economy, and exempt Mexico City from taking care of its own.
4) Mexico uses illegal immigration to leverage U.S. foreign policy, as Trump saw and so threatened Obrador to stop his manipulating our bilateral affairs from trade to immigration. On almost every issue of contention—trade, the cartels, fentanyl export, illegal immigration—Mexico insidiously shrugs that it simply cannot stop the flood into the U.S.—unless America…fill in the blanks.
5) Mexico in theory damns the cartels that kill 100,000 American fentanyl and opioid users in the U.S. each year—often by the cartels deliberately disguising their drugs as sedatives and anti-anxiety tranquilizers. But in reality, the cartels have so infiltrated the Mexican government at all levels, that they de facto run the country and in trickle-down-fashion bring in over $10 billion to Mexico in U.S. drug money. Imagine if a U.S. mafiosi cartel, manned by ex-patriate Americans inside Mexico, simply absorbed large tracts of Mexico as its own criminal environs so that it could peddle addictive and lethal drugs to rural Mexican villages.
6) Ask yourself: consider all our existential enemies—China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. Have any of them been at least partly culpable in killing 100,000 Americans a year? Have any destroyed the U.S. border? Have any deliberately exported citizens to the U.S. they knew had criminal records and long prison histories? If not, then why is Mexico an “ally” rather than the enemy that it otherwise seems to be by any logical definition?
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