Voices of Mexico no. 64

Our Voice

Mexico-U.S. bilateral relations do not seem to be normalizing as they need to. The distancing of the two presidents and the apparent gap on common issues that this distancing shows has and will continue to have long-term negative implications for the many items pending on the two nations’ agenda. The first and most important is the regularization of the situation of undocumented Mexican workers in the United States, and signing a migratory agreement that would make it possible to foresee these kinds of recurring difficulties that could become obstacles to negotiating other issues of the highest national interest for both parties.

The United States is making a grave mistake when it supposes that Mexican immigration is a security problem. And Mexico also makes a mistake if it assumes that the migration negotiations should favor it without being willing to offer something in exchange. Actually, however, today in the United States, the Latino population in general and the Mexican population in particular represent a sociological and political phenomenon of major importance. The more than five million Mexicans with irregular migratory status presuppose another fact of utmost significance: cash remittances (which come to more than U.S.$10 billion annually) are about to become the fundamental component of Mexican national income, surpassing oil, the maquila in dustry and tourism. If we add the fact that the growth rate of the Mexican-origin population in the United States is extremely high and has even surpassed that of Afro-Americans, Asians and other Latinos, we have a budding process of exponential growth of Mexicans that is impossible to ignore in either country.