Use an Immigration Carrot, Not a Stick : Free trade: Help Mexico develop jobs for millions who will otherwise flood our border.

During the 1980s the United States fought desperately to stem the tide of illegal aliens crossing its southern border. The Reagan Administration and Congress committed themselves to reducing the flood through tougher immigration laws, the use of more sophisticated border surveillance and an increase in manpower. Those efforts were no match for the “push factor” of a deteriorating economy in Mexico. That may change with a U.S.-Mexico free-trade agreement, which offers the possibility of drastically reducing the number of illegal immigrants pouring into the United States from across the border.

After serving for six years as commissioner for the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s western region, I came to realize the limits of law enforcement in this area. New laws and tighter enforcement don’t address the root cause of most illegal immigration: economic problems in the immigrants’ home lands.

That is why I strongly support a free-trade agreement with Mexico, home of an estimated 80% of the immigrants crossing our southern border illegally. Providing jobs for Mexicans in Mexico would do more to halt the illegal flow than spending billions on U.S. enforcement measures.

Free trade and free markets have created enormous wealth for once-impoverished countries like Taiwan and Korea. There is no reason to believe that the “Asian miracle” cannot be repeated in Mexico, a country filled with hard-working, entrepreneurial people. However, Mexico’s President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and his free-market team face a daunting task of turning around an economy weakened by decades of central planning. Strong leftist and anti-American groups in Mexico are fighting to return the country to a protectionist, centrally planned economy. Much of Salinas’ success in countering those forces will rest on his ability to develop millions of jobs.

A free-trade agreement will go a long way toward strengthening the economy that will provide those jobs. An estimated $40 billion in Mexican flight capital might be repatriated. For a country with a GNP of only $201 billion, a return of $40 billion would be a tremendous spur for development, providing jobs for the millions that now seek them north of the Rio Grande.

Opponents of free trade with Mexico fail to grasp the enormous opportunity the United States now has to help Mexico pull itself out of poverty, and thereby secure our southern border.

A decade ago, Mexico was dedicated to a controlled economy and a foreign policy that hindered closer political and economic ties with the United States.

In this environment, law-enforcement measures were the U.S. government’s principal response to illegal immigration, which had risen dramatically: 1,615,000 border apprehensions in 1986, compared to 759,000 in 1980. Around that time, we saw a change in Mexican politics. More and more political leaders were promoting closer ties with the United States as part of the solution to their economic problems. We began to hear less talk among Mexicans about socialist solutions and protectionism, less nationalist Yankee-bashing. Since President Salinas took the helm in 1988, we have seen an acceleration of liberalization efforts in trade, tariffs, investment and so on. A free-trade treaty will significantly solidify these gains.

Some opponents argue that free trade will actually increase illegal immigration by drawing even more Mexicans from the rural interior toward the border. In fact, it will promote growth throughout the country by giving the same tax and ownership benefits to industries in the interior as the border-area export industries now have.

Border patrols and interdiction efforts are a necessary part of securing our nation’s territory. However, without economic growth in Mexico, U.S. law-enforcement measures along our southern border will be largely a failure.

President Salinas has said, “We want to export goods, not people.” Mexicans want to stay in their own country. Their best chance for doing so lies in free trade. If we fail to give them that chance, we will have passed up our own best chance for reducing illegal immigration from Mexico.