by
Justin Darr
If there is anything people hate more than buying a
used car, filling out tax forms, or visiting their attorney’s office it is
meeting the glassy eyed enthusiasm of some acquaintance who wants to
recruit you into a multi-level-marketing scheme. You know the ones. If you
can make a list of everyone you know, and they can make a list of everyone
they know, and each of you spend a few hundred dollars a month on some
assorted widget or another, in three to five years you could be living on
your own Caribbean island.
Fortunately, in the United States, the worse of these Ponzi pyramid
schemes are illegal. But, imagine for a moment if they were not. Imagine
also if, rather than toothpaste, insurance, and Saint John’s Wort, the
product you were purchasing was the right to build a shed in your back
yard, open a business, or avoid police harassment? And, what if this
extortion was institutionalized to the point that it became the price of
trying to live a normal life?
This is
the case of the average citizen of Mexico. In 2005, a survey conducted by
Transparency International showed that between 31 and 45% of Mexicans had
someone in their family forced to pay a bribe to a public official in the
past year.
Corruption is an endemic aspect of Mexican government. Extending from the
local police who routinely shake down people who commit minor infractions
for cash all the way to top government officials who habitually cut deals
with political cronies and drug traffickers to shape Mexican law.
After
endless decades, this culture of corruption has taken its toll. Over 20%
of the Mexican population lives in poverty, only 62% of people have access
to clean drinking water, 25% of the economy is illegal, and in the oil
rich state of Chiapas; 40% of all homes have dirt floors and 21% have no
electricity. All in a country with a $1 trillion gross domestic product.
Mexico
has all the resources to develop a successful economy and enable its
citizens to earn a comfortable, modern life, but chooses not to do so for
the simple fact that the government is unwilling to stop enriching
themselves at the expense of average people.
Faced
with these realities, is it any wonder 46% of the Mexican population would
like to immigrate to the United States?
It would
seem obvious that any responsible government in Mexico’s situation would
take steps to fight the corruption that is ruining the lives of so many of
its citizens, reform itself, and reverse these trends. Mexican President
Vicente Fox tried after he was elected in 2000, but all of his reform
efforts failed soon after the Mexican bureaucracy realized that reform
would mean they would have to stop running back to the cash cows of
extortion, bribery and illegal kickbacks that have financed their
lifestyles.
But now,
President Fox has found an answer to solving the problems of a stagnating
economy and crushing poverty that does not require him to confront
Mexico’s political corruption: illegal immigration.
Why solve
problems when you can export them? It is obvious that almost half of all
Mexicans do not want to be there, so why bother wasting all the time an
effort on making Mexico less of a lousy place to live and just let them
go?
In fact,
encourage it. Not only does illegal immigration reduce the number of
impoverished citizens who might get mad enough to vote you out of office,
but it also creates an outstanding, if unauthorized, source of national
income in the form of family remittances. Last year, Mexicans living in
the United States sent over $17 billion in cash remittances to their
families in Mexico, constituting the largest single source of income into
the Mexican economy, outpacing even the oil industry.
However,
more important to many Mexican officials, illegal immigration creates vast
new opportunities for them to do what they do best; collect bribes and
extort cash.
Just an
in any other Ponzi pyramid scheme, eventually the money starts to dry up.
The only way to keep the scheme afloat is to either find new population
areas where the numbers of victims of your system have not yet reached a
saturation point, or those already caught up in your deception suddenly
find new sources of income to give you. The second is the case for Mexico.
Mexicans working in the United States send their money home trying to help
their families survive, only to see it extorted from their loved ones by
corrupt Mexican officials
Is it any
wonder Mexico is fighting to prevent the United States from securing its
borders? If America were to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, then
Mexico would be forced to deal with its own problems and actually address
the issues that have forced millions of its citizens to want to flee the
nation, namely, the incompetence of its government.
Mexico
has recently claimed the United States’ efforts to secure its borders are
an international human rights abuse. However, the only human rights abuse
occurring in this case is Mexico’s treatment of its own citizens. It is
not the United States’ responsibility to act as Mexico’s economic savior
and pull its people out of poverty, but to stop the flow of illegal
immigrants, and force Mexico to change itself. Truthfully, it is the only
moral decision we can make.
© January, 2006 Justin
Darr
www.justindarr.com
Justin Darr is a freelance writer living
in the Philadelphia area with his wife and twin children. He can be read
widely on the Internet and in publications across North America and in
Europe.
Justin Darr is a staff writer for The New Media Alliance,
and a proud member of the MoveOff Network.
The opinions expressed in
this column represent those of the author and do not necessarily reflect
the opinions, views, or philosophy of TheRealityCheck.org
