Crossing National Borders: North America

Crossing National Borders: Connecting People to Economies

VIDEO
Introduction by Bill Emmott Presentations: - Lino Gutierrez - Gustavo Mohar - Grover Joseph Rees Response by Doris Meissner
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Introduction by Jessica Mathews Movement of People in the European Union Full Agenda Speakers' Bios

MR. BILL EMMOTT: Thank you very much, Jessica, and good morning. I'm Bill Emmott. I'm editor of The Economist, and I'm delighted to be here for this very important discussion.

We at The Economist see ourselves as, in some ways, the house magazine of globalization. And, therefore, we have, ever since we were founded more than 150 years ago, had an intimate interest in it. We are in favor of free movement of just about everything, and not just copies of The Economist. You're going to hear from me later when I moderate the discussion. I'm going to take part in it. So I won't speak any more now, but I'm going to hand over to our speakers.

We have some excellent speakers, in two separate sessions, first about North America, and then about the European Union. And each is going to speak for 10 minutes, followed at the end of all of their talks in the first session by, I hope, a spirited question and answer session. And I would urge you to take full part of that and full advantage of it. No question is too annoying or embarrassing or penetrative to propose to these speakers. We're going to start with Lino Gutierrez, principal deputy assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere at the State Department, previously U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, and very much a specialist on this issue. Lino.

MR. LINO GUTIERREZ: Thank you, Mr. Emmott.

It's a pleasure to be here amongst so many distinguished guests. A special hello to Ambassador Billy Ford of Panama and Ambassador to the OAS, Miguel Ruiz Cabanas of Mexico, and other good friends in the audience. This is an exciting time for those of us who work on Western Hemisphere affairs. President Bush has made it clear that relations with the Western Hemisphere will be a priority for his administration. And it is not a coincidence that the first leader that President Bush reached out to was President Vicente Fox of Mexico, and his first trip overseas was to Mexico, a country which President Bush knows very well, I found out.

In addition, the President will be attending the third summit of the Americas in April. He will meet the other 33 democratically elected leaders of the hemisphere. We look forward to working with our partners in the hemisphere to meet the mutual challenges that await us, including strengthening democracy, negotiating free trade areas of the Americas, cooperating on law enforcement and working together on a cooperative approach to migration. Since the subject of today's discussion is connecting people to economies, I'd like to share a few thoughts about the economic relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and how economic factors affect migration.

Since the enactment of NAFTA in 1994, our two economies are becoming increasingly entwined. Trade between the U.S. and Mexico topped the $250 billion mark last year, making Mexico the U.S.'s second largest trading partner after Canada. The U.S. economy has experienced sustained growth during the past decade. With job creation high and unemployment at historic lows, migrant workers found opportunities for work in many sectors of our economy. Some credit the low wage migrant workers with helping fuel growth by providing their needed labor skills and keeping inflation down. With the U.S. economy slowing, however, it is not so clear that the need or support for a large number of foreign workers will continue.

The Mexican economy grew at a rate of 6.9 percent last year. Projections for 2001 are generally lower, owing, in part, to the slowdown in the U.S. economy. The primary pull factor for Mexicans to migrate to the U.S. is greater economic opportunity. And as long as the great disparity between jobs and wages exists between the United States and Mexico, it is reasonable to conclude that Mexicans will continue to migrate north. The push factor for migration is demographics. Using current projections, Mexico will have more citizens entering the labor market, on an annual basis, than the number of new jobs created for perhaps another decade.

Demographic factors being what they are, migration to the U.S. would slow with a stronger Mexican economy. In the long run, a strong economy that creates jobs in Mexico is the best way to reduce migration of Mexican workers to the U.S. President Fox has expressed his commitment to developing policies that will be aimed at job creation in Mexico in areas that are traditional centers of migration in the U.S. We know that most illegal migration is born of necessity, and that given the choice, most Mexicans would prefer to stay home if economic opportunity was such that they could support their families.

Thus, we support President Fox's initiatives to create more opportunities in Mexico, and the Bush administration will promote U.S. investment in Mexico to help create more jobs. Mexican workers, both legal and without documents, have been coming to the U.S. to work, in varying numbers for the past 150 years. In the 20th century, great numbers of Mexicans moved north in the years following the Mexican Revolution, searching for economic opportunity. The numbers went down during the depression of the 1930s.

With the advent of U.S. involvement in World War II, the need for foreign workers, especially agricultural workers, went up sharply. Thus, Mexico and the U.S. implemented the Bracero Program for temporary migrants in 1942. The program lasted until 1964. At its peak in the late 1950s, over 400,000 Mexican workers per year were admitted legally to the United States. Since the end of the Bracero Program, many Mexicans have received visas for temporary work in the U.S., but millions of others have crossed the border without documents in search of work. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that there are as many as 3.5 million Mexicans currently residing in the U.S. without proper legal authorization.

Let me pass along some facts about the numbers of Mexicans who have been admitted legally to the U.S. in the past few years. In the past 20 years, 265,000 Mexicans have received temporary or non-immigrant visas to enter the U.S. to work. In that same time, another 1.1 million Mexicans have received immigrant visas to reside and work legally in the United States. More immigrant visas are issued to Mexicans than to any other nationality. In addition, provisions with the Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act, the LIFE Act, which was enacted in December of 2000, are generous to Mexicans. The U.S. government estimates that 70 percent of the potential beneficiaries of the LIFE Act are Mexicans.

This act will benefit over 224,000 Mexican family members of U.S. citizens, and legal permanent residents, by allowing them to apply for temporary, non-immigrant visas, with work authorization, to come to the U.S. while waiting for processing of their immigrant visas. INS also estimates that an additional 560,000 Mexicans residing legally in the U.S. for a period of time are eligible for the LIFE Act to apply for legal, permanent residency. Although these recent developments have been particularly positive for Mexican nationals, the issue of migration has long been a contentious one in the relations between our two countries. It is an issue on which various interested parties offer opinions that are widely divergent.

And the formulation of U.S. policy on migration for all nations, not just regarding Mexico, lawmakers consider input from all sides. The challenge is to come up with policies that take into account all of the various perspectives, while respecting the needs and humanity of the people affected. Presidents Bush and Fox discussed migration during President Bush's recent trip to Mexico. And following their meeting in Guanajuato at President Fox's ranch on February 16, the presidents issued the Guanajuato Proposal with the theme "Toward a Partnership for Prosperity."

I would like to share with you their words about migration contained in the document, and I quote, "Migration is one of the major ties that bind our societies. It is important that our policies reflect our values and needs, and that we achieve progress in dealing with this phenomenon. We believe that Mexico should make most of the skills in productivity of their workers at home. And we agree there should be an orderly framework of migration, which ensures humane treatment, legal security, and dignified labor conditions.

"For this purpose, we are instructing our governments to engage, at the earliest opportunity, in formal high level negotiations aimed at achieving short and long term agreements that will allow us to constructively address migration and labor issues between our two countries. We believe our two nations can now build an authentic partnership for prosperity based on shared democratic values and open dialogue that bring great benefits to our people. We want to move beyond the limitations of the past and boldly seize the unprecedented opportunity before us. We will do so as friends, in a spirit of mutual trust and respect."

The Bush administration has committed to exploring the issue of undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. with Mexican officials at the highest levels. A bilateral working group to discuss migration is being formed. The initial meeting of this group, which will be chaired by Secretary of State Colin Powell, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Mexican Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda and Mexican Interior Minister Santiago Creel, will take place soon. We are working on a mutually acceptable date, perhaps in early April.

The high level meeting will begin the process to look for a solution that ensures a safe and orderly migration that respects the laws and interests of both nations. While these discussions are of tremendous importance, we must keep in mind that the U.S. Congress has the ultimate authority to pass any new legislation affecting immigration policy. There have been some interesting proposals coming out of Congress recently, one by Senator Phil Gramm of Texas; and we will be working closely with Congress throughout this process.

In conclusion, we look forward to engaging the government of Mexico as a friend, neighbor, and equal partner on the issue of migration. I am hopeful that the upcoming discussions will be the beginning of the process that will lead to satisfactory results for citizens of both countries.

Thank you very much.

MR. EMMOTT: Thank you very much for that clear and very positive presentation, and for your admirable precision in keeping to ten minutes -- precisely, as far as I can tell. [Laughter.]

MR. LINO: As ordered.

MR. EMMOTT: As ordered, exactly. My second speaker is from the Mexican side of this discussion of this enterprise, Gustavo Mohar, director-general of migration for Mexico, and director of the Mexican Interagency Task Force on Migration. He is also, as a writer, a specialist on economic integration issues and migration issues with many complications in this field and is a long time foreign ministry official.

Mr. Mohar.

MR. GUSTAV MOHAR: Good morning.

Well, thank you very much, and thank you to the Carnegie Endowment and to the Reuters Foundation for organizing this meeting. I think that the timing couldn't be better. And it couldn't be better not only in the Mexican-U.S. relations, but, as a whole, because, as we know, discussing the role of borders, the role of national identities, the role of how to solve the apparently contradictory trends of an intense economic integration worldwide, with the human face of that integration, with the mobility of labor, with the mobility of people. And in Europe, as we will listen later, and in the Southeast, in South America and Central America, Mexico, and the U.S., and Canada, it is an issue of contemporary discussions. There are a lot of questions raised and still no very clear answers.

What I'm going to try to do today is to portray briefly what Mexico thinks, what Mexico and some officials that we have been working with in these matters in the last years have lived. What has happened in the real life? What is happening at the border now? What is happening in many small rural towns in Mexico now? What's happening in Nebraska, Idaho, Nevada, New York, California, Texas with the Mexican workers now, as we discussed. Let me start by saying, I'm quoting a phrase that we Mexicans don't know exactly who said it, but it was mentioned at the beginning of this century and it has come along with us since then, and it says, "Poor Mexico, so far away from God, so close to the United States." [Laughter.] And I will elaborate about that during my presentation.

First, as Lino said, things have changed drastically in our bilateral relations in the recent decades. Mexico, as the second trading partner of the U.S. -- it's difficult to imagine if we just look at it a few years ago -- second trading partner, just behind Canada. Second, we have been neighbors always. We will continue to be neighbors always. We have a common border of 2,000 miles in which probably there is the most intense legal crossings of people, goods, trucks, cars than any other developing and developed border in the world. So we have still a long way and a big challenge to discuss within us, in a different manner, in a more open way, in a more frank discussion.

How should we reconcile our natural trend to integrate more with the challenges presented at this border, on the legal crossings of people, on the illegal crossings of goods that are wanted for both, and the undocumented crossing of Mexicans trying to get here to work. Our common history on immigration is not an easy one. Since 1965 when the Bracero Program ended, both governments in a way neglected talking openly and more deeply about this matter. We both looked the other way.

Since 1994/96 -- and I think that history will have reason to say that the debate triggered in the U.S. in 1994, coming up from California, and ending in 1996 with the adoption of IRIRA, the most comprehensive immigration and law reform that even scholars here have recognized as being the most tough against immigrants, changed, in my view, and will represent a turning point on the way that Mexico and the U.S. are going to be dealing with these issues in the next years. And let me explain to you why.

Also, we say in Mexico that when the U.S. sneezes, Mexico gets pneumonia in immigration matters. It has always been that any immigration decision by the U.S. Congress affects Mexican nationals in Mexico. But this has expressed itself in unprecedented matters since 1996. The new resources given to the INS, the deployment of thousands of agents at the Southwest border of the United States, the intense activity of deportations from the interior of the United States, have affected basically Mexicans. Following INS statistics in the last five years, just from the interior of the U.S., more than 800,000 Mexicans have been deported. Eight hundred thousand.

Each year, the INS reports about the million -- million two-hundred thousand detentions at the border. Unfortunately, our numbers report more than 2,000 deaths at the border. And as we speak of temporary workers, of the possible solutions, or the impossible solutions, whether we want or we don't want, whether it is needed or not needed, what is a fact is that we still have a constant flow of people coming to work to the United States each year. And if you look at the U.S. Labor Department and State Department statistics for the last three years, using the temporary visas available today, the number of Mexicans using H2A and H2E visas have triggered exponentially. Just in fiscal year 2000, more than 50,000 Mexicans came with temporary visas to work in the U.S. So there is a reality that needs to be recognized.

Mexico is in a very important transition. We have been through in the last years and finalized with the election on July the second of President Fox and a new party in power. There is a democratic, fundamental change and transition in Mexico. There is also a demographic trend that needs to be considered. Yes, we will have still a big number of newcomers in the labor market of Mexico. But the projections clearly indicate that this trend is clearly diminishing. In the next 10 to 15 years, the population and age of migrating is clearly going down. So if we are able to keep a sustained economic development, offering jobs and better wages, these two quarters will cross and eventually depressions for immigrants will clearly come down.

On the U.S. side, there is a big public debate about the baby boomers retiring in the next 15 years. There's a big debate on how to fund the social system and the pension retirement system. Immigrants are clearly an option to fund part of that need. And it is clear, in the immigrant total population, that the Hispanic component of that immigration is clearly gaining a bigger space. And within the Hispanic population, the Mexicans are at least 60 to 70 percent of all of that. So the numbers, as Lino said, speak for themselves. Yes, Mexico is number one in practically each line that composes the immigration policy of the United States -- undocumented, legalized, temporary Mexican-American community, increasing presence, increasing influence, and the will to participate actively in the political and social establishment in the United States.

So coming back to Mexico, what we have today is a government elected democratically, with a president that comes from Guanajuato, a state traditionally known for sending migrants to the U.S. -- so he lived directly [with] the consequences of this immigration -- the small towns without men, women left alone, kids waiting for the father. The remittances that helped him and sustained local and regional economies -- more than $6 billion to $8 billion per year is sent by our immigrants to small rural towns all over Mexico, six to eight billion dollars per year. So this president has made one of his priorities to talk openly with the U.S. about this issue.

A few years ago, I had a chance to talk to a very powerful senator in the field about eventual reform. The main message that the Mexican ambassador wanted to convey to him was that these reforms will have a tremendous impact on the bilateral relations and particularly at the border. And this senator looked at the ambassador -- and they were very good friends -- and he said, "Well, you know, I've listened to you mention the word bilateral twice. And let me tell you, this is not bilateral, this is domestic, because immigration policy is debated in the U.S. in accordance with the domestic interests."

The senator then said, "I have seen many presidential encounters between Mexico and U.S. presidents. And you know, the Mexican presidents have reached a level of talking of human rights of their migrants. But they both never go deeper than that. And I think," he said, "that it will never happen." Well, it has happened. It has happened. And now for the Mexican government, as Lino said, we have agreed to having discussions, formal discussions, in which we will be looking for honest, straightforward, short, medium, long-term views of how to deal with this matter in a better way.

We don't defend illegality. The essence of the message of the Mexican government is let's look for ways to channel this flow, to help the people that are already here to become legal. Let's end illegality. We are going to be doing, ourselves, our job. It is a shared responsibility. We are doing the same with the southern border of Mexico. We are beginning to prepare ourselves to talk seriously with Central America to see what Mexico needs to do to do a better job in our southern border. We have to be coherent and to have a common approach in our south and northern border.

So I will finish, finally, saying these discussions and the future of the Mexico-U.S. migration dialogue requires imagination, requires out-of-the-box thinking, requires changing the terms of the debate. I think that there is a big opportunity now not only to connect our people to our economies, but simply to connect our people to make us understand better, to eliminate prejudices and stereotypes and to look at the facts in a constructive, positive way. I will end by quoting another author, Carlos Fuentes, one of our greatest novelists, who in a recent book about migration to Mexico ends saying: "Well, that praise upon Mexico was okay, but things have changed. Now, it's more accurate to say, poor Mexico and the United States, both so far away from God, neighbors forever. [Laughter.]

Thank you.

MR. EMMOTT: Thank you very much, Mr. Mohar, for a very inspiring talk, being actually very close to God, even here in the United States.

Our next speaker will take us onto Capitol Hill, Joseph Rees. It's the first time I've ever introduced a former chief justice of the high court of American Samoa, and it's an honor to do so. He's also a former general counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and now is counsel for the House International Relations Committee. Joseph Rees.

MR. JOSEPH REES: The recent discussions between President Bush and President Fox present an opportunity which is even broader than the opportunities presented for bilateral relations, because they present an opportunity to get us from where we are on practical United States immigration policy to where, I think, almost everyone would believe we ought to be.

Starting with where we ought to be -- what most of us think about the United States and about the United States relations to immigrants -- we think of ourselves as the fairest and most generous country in the world. We have our problems, but in terms of what we value about our political system, that's what we think about it. And we believe, truthfully that, over the years, the United States has welcomed more immigrants, legally, than any other country in history.

So what we'd like to be saying to people is the welcome mat is still out, the Statue of Liberty is still there; we welcome you; immigrants are part of our society and always will be, but you have to come legally. We do believe in laws. And if you come illegally, we will catch you and something bad will happen. It might not be quite as Draconian as some have suggested, but you will at least have disadvantages in the immigration system compared to people who come legally.

That, unfortunately, is not where we are. Indeed, on both parts of that message, we are 180 degrees opposite from where we need to be. The message that we are sending to potential immigrants, at least who are what we call unskilled workers, people who have neither close relatives in the United States nor special skills selected by our immigration laws -- what we're saying is don't even think about trying to come legally; there's just no way; the door is closed to you.

On the other hand, if you come illegally, the odds are overwhelming that you will not be caught. If you don't mind living in a sort of gray economy and violating other laws once you get here, you'll probably be able to do it, perhaps indefinitely. And who knows. There might be some adjustment down the road, 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Most of us, I think, would agree that we don't want to be in that place. And yet that's where we are, and it's where we've been for 10 to 15 years.

The reality that is driving the problem and that can drive the solution is that our economy, the United States economy, needs and demands millions more workers than are supplied domestically and that are supplied currently by legal immigration. These jobs are low-paid by United States standards. In the case of many of these jobs, they would simply go away if you try to make them pay enough that most Americans would want those jobs. So, on the one hand, that's what's driving illegal immigration. On the other hand, as President Bush and Fox recognized, that presents the potential for orderly legal migration that would benefit the United States, and it would benefit the largest supplier of immigrant labor to the United States, Mexico, of immigrants, including immigrant laborers.

Now, the tools that exist for dealing with this problem -- there's a limited universe. It's not like people haven't been thinking about this for a long time. So we kind of know what the arsenal is. Briefly, the solution for providing more workers in an orderly fashion, you can have a dramatically increased number of legal immigrants in the sense of green cards, lawful permanent residents of visas. And you'd have to expand dramatically the number of unskilled workers, which is now at 10,000, and I understand they're not even getting them. You'd need hundreds of thousands of new, lawful, permanent resident visas as part of that mix if you wanted to deal with it that way.

The other possibility, and has been suggested recently, is guest workers. Again, you'd have to have hundreds of thousands in order to make it work, in order to make it a real alternative to the illegal immigration, people who could come in for a couple years who would have the benefit of the labor laws, the benefit of having legal immigration status, but who would not be in the queue for lawful permanent residents and citizenship, unlike most immigrants. You could give some form of immigration relief, most often spoken of as an amnesty to illegal or undocumented workers who are already here as part of our set of solutions to the problem.

Now, in order to do the other part of the equation, in order to make it harder to illegally immigrate, there are basically two sets of things you can do. You can have direct control on illegal immigrants; that is to say, border control and efficient means of tracking people down once they're here illegally, or if they overstay their visa, and deporting them. Those can be unilateral or, as some have suggested with respect to the United States and Mexico, they should be bilateral. There should be bilateral cooperation where you have a significant number of people trying to cross our border illegally.

And then, there are indirect controls, things like employer sanctions, which don't concentrate on stopping people from coming or on directly removing them, but which try to make the United States an unattractive place for those people to live and work once they get here or make it unattractive for them to come. Now, the problem -- and it's always been this way, and most people in this room know at least as well as I do, in putting together the right mix of those solutions, is that almost everybody who likes some of the solutions from category one, the increased legal immigration solutions, is bitterly opposed to anything in category two, the increased immigration control. The people, on the other hand, who are the biggest supporters and absolutely insist on category two believe we've already done plenty of category one, and we absolutely don't need it, and the country's already being ruined because we're doing too much of it.

So it's hard for those people to communicate, even within the domestic political framework. And they haven't done very well at it in the past. In the past, our comprehensive immigration laws have either been a thumping victory by one side, as the '96 bill was, where even though some members of Congress and some of us who were working in Congress concentrated on getting rid of, and succeeded in almost every instance in getting rid of what we regarded as the most egregious parts of the bills as it came through -- the dramatic cuts in legal immigration, the cap on refugees. There was still enough left that some of us considered egregious, but the bill was, on balance, a thumping victory for the anti-immigration side.

More often what you have is the '86 model, what I call the Washington compromise, where people get into a room who really don't agree on very much. And they begin, for some reason, by convincing themselves that the worst thing they can do is to do nothing. Now this is almost never true. You can almost always think of something that's worse to do than nothing (laughter). But they convince themselves of this, and they sit in the room for weeks, and weeks, and weeks, and finally, in the end, one by one, they throw out -- each side throws out all of its good ideas, and they put the bad ideas into a package, and that becomes the compromise (laughter).

Now this sounds facetious, but I've been studying it -- there are instances in the tax realm where this has happened to. I don't think it's an accident. I think you can prove arithmetically that your bad ideas are harder to give up than your good ideas, because if your bad ideas were easy to give up, you would not have them (laughter). So, in the end, when everybody gets only what they absolutely insist on, they get their bad ideas -- they get employer sanctions, they get amnesty, and they don't get the other things that they were looking for.

Commenting briefly on the parts of the package, what we could do in the solutions if we're to avoid the Washington compromise. First, we need to recognize, if we do guest workers -- first of all, we do need to recognize that some people don't want citizenship in the United States. That's not their goal. They do want to come here and work and go back. And if that's true, then it's a win-win-win situation to include guest workers in a mix, but only if the guest worker statute is -- if we concentrate not on making them just like other immigrants, but on making sure that they will be treated like human beings once they get here. The problem with guest workers is sometimes that doesn't happen. And so we need to apply the same laws to those people, other than perhaps the ultimate right to citizenship that we apply to other people.

Second, increase legal immigration outright, if we could do it in the context of tighter controls. And it seems to me it's an essential element and provides a lot of opportunities, because somehow we want to get away -- we don't want the Statue of Liberty to say "Send us your electrical engineers, your minor, never married children, and your inter-company transferees." [Laughter]. We want to get back to the idea that this wonderful good of being an American does not depend 100 percent on accidents of birth, that it's something that everybody can aspire to.

And you know, you might want everybody in the world to come, all your friends to come to dinner at your house, but you don't want them all to come on the same night. So we have got to have immigration control to control the velocity. But if we could get back to where we were before 1921, to the idea that everybody has a chance and that waiting in line -- if you want to work, if you don't want to come here, just go on welfare and commit crimes or something -- but if you really do want to be an American and participate in the American dream, you can do that.

Finally, it seems to me, the government of Mexico, I hope, will accept the idea that indirect control is not going to work for the United States; indirect control which concentrates on making the United States an unattractive place for people to be. Because there are just too many places in the world that we can never win an unattractiveness contest with. [Laughter.] This is why employer sanctions has not worked.

And so we've got to have direct control. We've got to have more border control, not less, and it ought to be bilateral so that it can be humane. And we've got to keep on having deportations. Once we get those generous rules, there will still be people who will violate them. And you've probably got to do lots of deportations rather than fewer deportations if you want it to work.

Thank you.

MR. EMMOTT: Thank you very much again. Marvelous spirit and marvelous sentiments that I very much agree with.

I'm now going to introduce Doris Meissner, who is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, but also a former Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. She's going to give a response to the panelists' presentations, after which we will open for questions. Doris?

MS. DORIS MEISSNER: Thank you and good morning.

Well, my role is to respond, so I get to pick and choose. I'm going to kind of draw on a couple of the points that have been made here, and then, of course, I can't resist the opportunity to make one or two points of my own.

First off, I think it really is critical to emphasize what an extraordinary shift it is that we are talking about, and what that means vis a vis this issue. Gustavo talked about it. We, of course, are aware of it from reading the newspapers. But the fact that President Fox has said Mexico is responsible for migration issues, just as the United States takes responsibility for migration issues -- the fact that President Fox has put that on the Mexican agenda as the issue of first importance that he spoke about in the United States after he was elected and in the meeting with President Bush is absolutely an historic shift and a great, great opportunity for the United States and for Mexico, if we take advantage of it.

I think we all know that the distance that this represents is one of, well, certainly for the last 20, 30 years -- overall, Mexico's view has been the safety valve view. Mexico has treated migrations north as really an issue of economic determinism -- push, pull -- and has had the view that the state has no role, that these are simply things that happen. And if it's anybody's problem, it's the United States' problem, but it certainly isn't Mexico's. We've moved from that to a period during really this last decade, but essentially a period that was triggered by NAFTA and increased cooperation.

We've moved to a very productive period in the '90s of pulling away from that hands-off view to one of joint actions, joint cooperation, very, very productive dialogue. And the premise has been managing the problem, working together to manage migration issues, but nonetheless deal with the givens, and deal with the givens in a way that makes migration be less tense and less volatile in the overall bilateral relationship. And in the process of doing that, we have done a lot of confidence building, and we have put many mechanisms into place that are a strong foundation for moving ahead.

But moving ahead now is possible because of what Mexico has done, which is, in my view, to take responsibility for migration as an issue that is clearly important and central in Mexico's forward effort and move to progress, and as critically involved in its overall national democratic development and economic progress. That is really quite revolutionary. So the idea of formulating a new vision -- President Fox, of course, has stated it as one of open borders -- is necessarily comprehensive. And we must take it on as an issue that is comprehensive and not allow ourselves to come to just a few programmatic, more narrow responses, in my opinion.

That, however, raises all kinds of issues for both of our countries, and they are very, very thorny issues. I'm going to give you just a couple of examples of some of the things that have been touched on here and draw them out just a little bit further. There are many others. I'm going to concentrate on the U.S.'s issues and not be presumptuous to comment on what Mexico's might be, but there are just as many difficult issues for Mexico as we walk down this road. The critical issue for the United States now with Mexico is to determine whether, indeed, we really should formally have a special migration relationship with Mexico. We have a view in immigration policy, which has been hard fought and hard won, that we treat all countries around the world equitably, that there ought to be equal access to U.S. immigration for countries around the world.

And that is based on the notion that our history was one of national origins. We've rejected that kind of immigration selection in favor of equal treatment for all countries. This dialogue with Mexico now raises the question for the United States: do we indeed want to formalize a special migration relationship with Mexico? De facto, we have it, because, as Gustavo said, Mexico dominates our immigration, both legal and unauthorized. Obviously, sharing a border, we have all kinds of special procedures and programs for Mexicans, just because of contiguity. But that's different from formalizing it and taking this next step. And so that's a very important debate that has to take place in the United States.

Similarly, I think the question of North America and the extension of NAFTA or, at least, the spirit of NAFTA, to incorporate the ideas of economic integration is a critical issue. It gets us, really, very close to the question of Europe, the European model, the Common Market, and issues that possibly will come up in the next session. But it does raise the question of the degree to which the United States and Canada are going to truly invest in Mexico and the degree to which Mexico represents, in one way or another, the kind of southern tier, analogous to Portugal, and Spain, and Italy in the European experience. President Fox has suggested that. He has talked about NAFTA Plus. He has talked about the broader regional development.

That has been an area where the United States and Mexico have not really ventured in the past. And it's absolutely crucial that that kind of an economic discussion take place if, indeed, we really are going toward what the goal here needs to be. And that is the kind of economic integration that ultimately allows for labor mobility that is based on jobs and skills, not on wage differentials, but simply create an unequal situation and therefore, the difficulty of numbers, differences in living standards, and the kinds of difficulties that we face right now.

So what Gustavo has said about the overall trends of the demography between Mexico and the United States, of the job growth in Mexico, of the economic trajectory for Mexico is absolutely true. Mexico can see growth levels of about 3 to 5 percent, which is very realistic right now, before Mexico can see a point where their job creation equals their numbers of people that are in the labor market. That is to be desired; that's what we need to get to in order for there to be the kind of basis that allows for labor mobility. But that is a long way off, and that requires a lot more than simply having migration agreements and different kinds of migration regimes.

Now, in that connection, let me say a few words about temporary workers, because temporary workers is, as Joseph has said, very much on the political agenda. I would say the temporary workers in temporary worker programs right now is a conclusion in search of a framework and in search of a policy rationale. Because to simply declare and, in some way, legislate a temporary or a guest worker program is to establish a far too narrow a solution, and to sell ourselves short in terms of what division that needs to really evolve here and what the kinds of relationships that need to be developed require.

S, in the temporary worker debate that has taken place, and will in the United States, I think we really need to be very, very clear about what we're really talking about. Are we really talking simply about temporary worker programs, as we're had in the past, as have existed in other parts of the world? Because those programs are fraught with all kinds of difficulties, which both Mexico and the United States, if we truly are concerned about rights, about labor conditions, about overall economic progress for the two countries, we should both be very, very wary and suspicious.

Largely, temporary worker programs are employer driven efforts to maintain and solidify cheap labor supplies. And that, it seems to me, is far too narrow and problematic a solution. On the other hand, if we really are talking about labor mobility and about economies that become integrated and living standards that become much more comparable, we certainly can talk about a different type of immigration program where jobs in the United States and attachments in the labor market in the United States constitute a preliminary step or a first step toward the possibility of permanent status.

Joseph has talked about citizenship and some people not ever wanting citizenship. It's one thing for people to choose not to become citizens. It's very much another thing if there are groups of people that never have the possibility for full permanent rights in a country like ours, that is a country where laws are the preeminent objective. So in talking in immigration terms about temporary-ness and permanents, there is a much broader palette on which we can paint, and I think we need to begin to pull out those kinds of issues. There are many more things that can be said about that, and it needs to be talked about.

Finally, let me just say a few things about the practicalities of actually doing these kinds of discussions. No matter what we do in the United States, there will be an asymmetry between the attention that's given to this issue in the United States government and the attention that's given to this issue in Mexico. It is a very positive thing that Mexico has put it at the top of its agenda. It is extremely positive that the new administration has taken this on as an early issue and an early commitment.

But when all is said and done, there are many competing issues that crowd the agenda for the United States. And keeping focused on it and arranging the bureaucracy and the bureaucratic machinery in a way that allows for a very comprehensive discussion like this that has such long-term requirements is going to be extremely difficult. And I think we really do need to pay some attention to just what the machinery can be that will allow for this ultimately to bear fruit in the way that we all very much want to see it bear fruit.

Thank you.

Q&A
http://www.forumsondemand.com/reuters/nationalborders/p1s5.ramv

MR. EMMOTT: Thank you very much for beginning the provocation. We have a short time for questions and discussion. May I ask that, when you do ask your question, you very much ask a question and not make a statement, because we are short for time -- keep it short, and also identify, very briskly, who you are or where you're from. Thank you.

Sir?

MR. WEINTRAUB: Thank you. My name is Sydney Weintraub, and I'm with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I am going to make one brief comment, because I think it's important, on Gustavo Mohar's quote about "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States." I've recently heard a discussion between an Israeli and a Mexican. And the Israeli's comment, "Poor Israel: so close to God and far from the United States." [Laughter.] Well, Mexico adopted that rationale when it entered into NAFTA. In a sense, it tried to get closer to the United States, and I think that context is important.

The issue I want to raise, though, is, again, on temporary workers. Let's assume that we adopt a temporary worker program -- two and a half million, 3 million a year -- I don't mean that -- 200,000, 300,000 a year, whatever figure you want. And we get in, what?, a million and a quarter people coming in. So all of the paraphernalia that now exists has to continue. There's one other famous quotation I want to cite, and I'll ask my question --

MR. EMMOTT: -- Please ask your question. Please.

MR. WEINTRAUB: Let me make that citation. "We only thought we were importing workers, and we learned we are importing men." My question is, have you thought of all of the unintended consequences of a temporary worker program? We've had many. And that's been the history, that all immigration legislation turns out almost the reverse of what we want. And I guess I'd like to hear the justification for a partial temporary worker program rather than some other kinds of solutions.

MR. REES: Can I?

MR. EMMOTT: Joseph, yes, please.

MR. REES: I'm the only person that had anything nice to say about temporary workers. I did not mean to gainsay the problems that have existed and that may be built into the idea of having temporary workers. All I'm saying is the political process, if nothing else, is going to put a limit on how much we can expand regular legal immigration. My suggestion is that when we get to that limit, maybe it's 200,000 extra people year. If we could somehow do that, we'd still need more. And temporary workers -- if you concentrate on making sure that while they are cheap, compared to American -- and cheap is a pejorative -- but inexpensive compared to American workers, that they are, in fact, being paid the minimum wage, that they are protected by other labor laws.

It's not something that we ought to begin by putting off the table. It's not the whole solution, and we've got to watch out for those programs, for those problems. You know, you don't have to call something a temporary worker program for it to be a temporary worker program. Right now, there are countries in the world that simply have very easy immigration and very easy deportation, with very little due process. And those places have worse problems than a structured temporary worker program. So, I think most of us have thought about the problems. I simply don't believe it's appropriate to begin by ruling it out; it should be part of a complex solution to a complex problem.

MR. EMMOTT: Let's have another question before bringing in some of the other members of the panel. Maybe in the front here.

Q: When the United States gets a cold, Mexico gets pneumonia. And if the American economy is slowing down, is Mexico going to achieve a strong economy, or in what scenario is it going to try to achieve a solution to the immigration problem? Is it going to be able to do it?

MR. EMMOT: Thank you. Gustavo, would you like to --

MR. MOHAR: Well, in terms of the economy, of course, the slowdown in the U.S. economy will impact Mexico. And, of course, as far as 70 to 80 percent of our exports come to the U.S., a decline in the rhythm of growth in the U.S. will certainly affect the Mexican industries. Now, we all hope, and not only Mexico, but practically all the world, that this is just a slowdown, and you can achieve to have a kind of a soft landing on the economy.

Now, how does that connect to immigration? Let me say it this way. In the U.S., the issue about the anti-immigrant feeling, let's say, that started in California in 1994 was basically rooted in the fact that California was going through an economic recession and there was this feeling that the immigrants were taking the jobs that the U.S. domestic worker couldn't take. So that triggered a debate that's been finalized, as I said, legally in the 1996 with the adoption of IRIRA when already the U.S. economy was in the upward trend and has been booming since then. But the law created restrictions for immigrants. So there is a mismatch.

And in the Mexican case, the number of Mexicans that have been coming to the U.S. since many years ago have usually come and find a job, regardless of the level of growth or not growth in the U.S. economy. Because in each of the markets that they go to, the unskilled, low wage market needs them. So, yes, of course, a slowdown in the economy will challenge discussion. Voices will arise again to blame the impact of immigrants, not only Mexicans. But don't forget that Mexicans are only half of the immigrants coming undocumented to the U.S. There are a lot of other nationalities.

So we are aware that the slowdown will create at least a debate about the role of immigrants, not only Mexicans, but as a whole. And we will need to deepen the discussion of what really difference does it make in the overall performance of the U.S. economy. Thank you.

Q: Yes, my name is Jim Kasin, and I write for a newspaper that's published in Mexico called La Jurnalia. It's a question for Ms. Meissner. I wonder if you would respond to the suggestions that maybe we've actually missed the opportunity, as sort of a follow up on the other economic question? The opportunity was there two years ago when we had Alan Greenspan, the unions, and other people -- even Carlos Santana talking about the difficulties of migration. And yet, over the last ten years, what have we had? We've had double the amount of money we've spent, but we still have the migrants.

You were sitting on the inside: what's the political coalition, based on your previous experience, on the outside that might successfully move this from a debate about guest workers to a debate about a real solution to the problem?

MS. MEISSNER: Well, I think, to some extent, that political coalition has to be formed. You know, part of what's going on here -- when you're establishing a new vision, it has to start by setting out a new idea, but then you have to build support for it. And I think that, you know, Joseph was very articulate about this from the standpoint of how actions in a package that we might come up with can be frustrated by the way the political forces have behaved in the past. And there's no reason to think that that wouldn't repeat itself unless there is some very significant change in thinking. And that's a process of education, and it's also a process of determining what people's real interests lie.

And that, you know, has yet to be discovered. But you'll only discover it if you start down that path of starting to really lay out how things might be different.

MS. BIRDSELL: Nancy Birdsall, Carnegie Endowment. Gustavo Mohar asked for out-of-the-box ideas, so I thought I would throw one out and ask for a comment from Joseph Rees or Lino Gutierrez. And the out-of-the-box idea would be to exploit the demographic situation by encouraging more movement of American retirees to Mexico. [Laughter.] And I'm serious about this. I mean, if you think about, there are probably at least a million households that move to Florida or Arizona more every year. And there are lots of pensioners going to Mexico already.

But how might we encourage that? What about the idea of ensuring that certain entitlement programs like Medicare can be really used in the Mexican medical facilities. There must be other ideas like that, truly out-of-the-box. But I hope that you might -- maybe you've already thought of those; maybe this is old hat. But could you comment on them, and could you try to be creative, if not today, in the bilateral commission on this kind of thing.

MR. EMMOTT: Thank you. Yes, I remember, from my time in Japan that, at one point, Australia got into high umbrage when they were defined by the Japanese as a retirement home. [Laughter.] So Gustavo, yes. Actually, you two. Yes, Lino and Joseph.

MR. REES: Well, I think it's a good idea. There are some things the United States can do. As you know, Social Security is portable, in that way, and some people do go to low cost countries, including Mexico, and receive their Social Security. I don't know that much about which of the benefits plans are portable and which aren't, but it's certainly something worth looking at. It is something very much, though, that the government of Mexico would have to be okay with in order for it to work, because some of the obstacles to Americans settling in Mexico have had to do with Mexican law.

MR. GUTIERREZ: Well, that was certainly outside-of-the-box, Nancy. {Laughter.] I think everything is on the table for these discussions, and that's certainly something that can be looked at. But I agree that it's something that cannot be done by the United States alone. We'd have to talk to Mexico. But I think what is true is that we have, in President Fox, an interlocutor who will think out-of-the-box and who will be willing to consider all of these ideas without any hang-ups of any kind.

MR. MOHAR: Just briefly. Once again, the facts, actually, the numbers. The place where most Americans live outside of the United States is precisely Mexico. Nobody knows exactly the number because many of them are undocumented.

[Laughter.]

MR. REES: But they catch one out of every three, so they think they can estimate.

MR. MOHAR: But on a serious note, the report that was announced that was just finished by a national panel, suggests both governments to start comprehensive discussions about the comprehensive totalization of social security agreements. And, in that way, your idea is very well taken. Thank you.

MR. EMMOTT: The lady in the third row, yes.

Q: -- I also want to touch on that economic development perspective. To what extent will the bi-national commission think about developing and really curve their regional development program that expands the idea of supporting private investments in Mexico?

MR. GUTIERREZ: I think development along the border is something that will be looked at. This is not the only working group, immigration working group. There will be a border issue working group which will look at the NADBAC (ph) and other institutions -- have they been properly utilized? But development along the border is a key component of our talks. We also plan to meet to talk about enhancement of NAFTA, how can we enhance what we have already, how can we promote investment, et cetera. And some kind of law enforcement working group also has to be organized as well.

So these are the areas in which we're going to engage very intensively with the new Mexican government. And the kind of thing you're talking about will be a part. There will be some overlap with some of these working groups.

MR. EMMOTT: The gentleman in the fourth row here, yes.

Q: Former Congressman Bruce Morrison. I have a question specifically for Joe. You spoke in terms of cheap labor as a reason for the program. And I wonder, have you really thought about all that you're really saying in that regard as to whether or not the immigration policy --

MR. REES: I have a feeling I'm going to.

[Laughter.]

MR. MORRISON: Well, I mean, just what you have to say about the fact that low wage workers in the United States present a lot of problems already -- uninsured for health insurance, largely, inadequate housing, things of that sort. Is it really a solution to bring in additional people to work at substandard, even at above minimum wage levels? Don't people who come temporarily in those kinds of roles look to get out of that temporary box, even illegally, to move upscale to a more adequate wage?

I think that Doris really put her finger on it. Temporary programs tend to be about employers maintaining uneconomic wage structures from the perspective of the U.S. economy. How do you avoid that, especially when you label the program cheap labor, which you actually did?

MR. REES: I acknowledged the label and suggested that it was a pejorative way of saying something that was simply a reality. That is, that there is a wage differential between the United States and other countries and that labor that may seem cheap to an American company is going to seem lavish to someone from a country where he can send back some of that money and his family can live very well on it. Here's why I think that temporary -- and I didn't start out wanting to give a speech for temporary workers, but here's why I think you don't put it off the table.

Let's say you've done everything else you can. You've increased legal immigration as much as you can, and there are still employers who want to hire people from outside the United States and who cannot, at the level that they can pay, and not have those jobs migrate somewhere else outside the United States -- they can't get the people on the newly defined United States labor market. You've got three things you can do, assuming you can't raise the legal immigration outright any more. You can consider temporary workers and you can deal with those problems. You cannot do that and acknowledge that those jobs are going to be filled by illegal immigrants, that people are going to continue to migrate illegally, and you won't have solved the problem you set out to solve in the first place. Or, you can be good enough at preventing illegal immigration that the jobs will migrate to some other part of the world.

Now, maybe two and three aren't as bad as one, but I believe that you can manage the -- I mean, it's often overstated that you take a problem like drug addition, and what you have to do is legalize it so that you bring it out into the open, and then you can regulate it, and so forth. But when we're talking about contracts between willing parties, there's something to be said for bringing it out into the open and regulating it and dealing with the problems instead of letting it go underground.

MR. EMMOTT: We've got time for one more question, from the lady standing at the back, and then we'll break.

Q: Thank you. My name is Amy Coughenour. I also work at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and I'm the president of Casa of Maryland, which is a community based organization here in the area that works with day laborers and temporary workers, many of whom are from Central America. And we have been seeing a lot of Central Americans already coming as a result of the earthquake in El Salvador, and we're very concerned about that situation.

And my question is, is there going to be, short term, any kind of policy cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico to try to stem the flow of people, especially from El Salvador, which we speculate are going to be coming in the next two to four months? And in the long-term basis, is that going to mean, in the long-term basis, that there is cooperation between Mexico and the United States in the new immigration arrangement? Is that going to mean Central Americans need not apply?

MR. MOHAR: In terms of what has happened in El Salvador recently and the impact that it has in pushing people out, as it happened in Honduras with the Mitch Hurricane a few years ago, it is a very serious and devastating problem. But the flow of people from Central America through Mexico to the U.S. has been a constant for many, many years. The Mexican authorities applying the immigration laws also detained and returned to their countries of origin between 100,000 and 150,000 Central Americans per year, [immigrants who] were really planning to come to the U.S.

Now, the U.S., and Mexico, and Canada joined with Central America in 1995, and we created what is called the, "Regional Conference on Migration," which is defined as the Puebla Group, because in Puebla, the city in Mexico where we started, we give its name to the group. And this is an initial seed, I say, to have a regional dialogue on the impacts of immigration and migration through the region. And it has been a very good learning and educating experience for all of us that have been participating to know really how little do we know about these matters within us. So we are right now engaged in consolidating the group. The group is, at the political level, headed by vice ministerial level, plus the commissioner of the INS, in which Doris Meissner was a key player on it.

And then we have technical meetings during the year which we are getting our people that are dealing in the day-to-day life with immigration matters to know and to change experiences to have a comparative knowledge of how to deal with these very complex issues. So I think that, once again, as in the U.S. Mexico case, I think immigration with the region is going to come up in the attention of the governments in the future.

MR. GUTIERREZ: Yes, the El Salvador earthquake was devastating, and the U.S. will respond with immediate aid to Salvadoran people in El Salvador, as we did for Hurricane Mitch, where we did provide a supplemental appropriation of over a billion dollars for the disasters caused by Hurricane Mitch. One of the things that the Central American countries asked for in these situations is a granting of temporary protective status, TPS, to ensure that, in addition to all the problems that they have, we do not deport hundreds of people of this kind that they cannot take of. And these are things that are being considered right now to help El Salvador.

MR. EMMOTT: Thank you very much. We should now break for coffee. I would suggest that we return in 15 minutes exactly to talk about the European Union. Thank you.

[END OF SESSION