There's no real question why the Mexican consulate in California has funded immigrants fighting US immigration restrictions, why the Mexican foreign ministry published pamphlets instructing Mexicans how to cross the US border, and why Mexican Pres. Vicente Fox is a staunch opponent of any measure the US takes to limit illegal immigration from the south. Victor Hanson explains:
Exporting its own poor turns out to be about the cash equivalent each day of selling on the open market about half a million barrels of $70 a barrel oil. The muscles of Mexico's former residents can prove just as deleterious as oil derricks to the long-term health of the country's economy.
Millions of unemployed Mexicans are now dependent upon money wired from the United States, where low-skill wages are now nine times higher than in Mexico. On the national level, such subsidies, like oil windfall profits, allow just enough money to hide the government's failure to promote the proper economic conditions - through the protection of property rights, tax reform, transparent investment laws, modern infrastructure, etc. - that would eventually lead to decent housing and well-paying jobs.
It may be counterintuitive to think that checks from hard-working expatriates are pernicious. But for a developing nation, remittances can prove as problematic as the proverbial plight of the lottery winner - sudden winnings that were not earned. In short, remittances, along with oil and tourism - not agriculture, engineering, education, manufacturing or finance - prop up an otherwise ailing Mexican economy. This helps explain why half of the country's 106 million citizens still live in poverty.
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It might be cruel should remittances somehow come to an end. But it may be even crueler in the long run not to deal with a broken system that facilitates such massive transfers - both for millions here in dire need of retaining all their earnings, and millions more in Mexico in more dire need of vast structural reform.
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