NEWS ANALYSIS : How Far Will Mexico Go for Free Trade Pact?

If Mexican politicians took Gov. Pete Wilson seriously, they might think he was inviting them to walk blindfolded across a minefield.

In his fusillade last week against illegal immigration, Wilson suggested that ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement be used to pressure Mexico to turn back migrants trying to cross the border into the United States.

But Wilson’s proposal--which generally has been ignored by the government and government-influenced media here--ignites two incendiary issues for Mexico.

First is relations with the migrant community in the United States, which sends home capital vital to many impoverished rural areas. Second is exactly how far the administration of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari is willing to go to get a free-trade agreement with Washington.

And from the Mexican perspective, the call to barricade both sides of the border is misplaced. Mexicans say NAFTA--far more effectively than armed border guards--will resolve the immigration problem by creating jobs that will keep their compatriots home.

Indeed, the specter of continuing immigration in the absence of NAFTA is one of their key selling points as the treaty nears a ratification vote in the U.S. Congress.

“We want to export goods, not people,” has become the refrain of Mexican officials from Salinas down during their increasingly frequent appearances on the U.S. rubber-chicken circuit to build support for NAFTA.

However, immigration experts agree that NAFTA is a long-term, rather than immediate, solution for supplying jobs to a labor force that grows by a million workers a year. Realistically, until those NAFTA-inspired jobs appear, Mexico needs to keep exporting people.

Significantly, Wilson’s statements have barely provoked comment in the villages of Michoacan, the central Mexican state that is home to many of California’s migrant workers.

“People believe he is crying wolf,” said Gustavo Lopez Castro, an immigration specialist at the Center for Rural Studies, a think tank in Michoacan.

“They have been hearing about plans to restrict migration since the 1960s,” he said. “Pete Wilson is not being taken very seriously around here.”

Lopez Castro finds the governor’s statements troubling mainly because they contribute to the atmosphere of racial violence that migrants feel building in California.

“Official hostility and race crimes go hand in hand,” he said.

However, some Mexicans are worried that Salinas might just go along with Wilson’s demands if President Bill Clinton were to ask him.

“Today, we see signs that this is less far-fetched than it would have seemed two years ago,” when the trade talks began, said political scientist Jorge Castaneda. “Clearly, there are very few things they are not willing to accept if they are linked to NAFTA.”

The Salinas administration already has been roundly criticized at home for succumbing to U.S. pressure on numerous issues in order to obtain NAFTA, the cornerstone of its economic policy.

For example, a day after stridently denying that they would allow Chinese bound for the United States to land in a Mexican port, embarrassed foreign relations officials admitted the refugees for deportation as the U.S. government had requested.

“When you agree to something like that, you are opening yourself up to all sorts of outrageous demands, and Wilson’s demands are outrageous,” said Castaneda.

Still, the discomfort the Chinese migrant situation caused is minor compared to the uproar that would follow a Mexican attempt to halt the migration of its own citizens, as Wilson has urged.

Lopez Castro recalled that eight years ago, the Baja California state government’s efforts to prosecute immigrant smugglers resulted in massive protests. Trying to stop the migrants themselves could cause riots, he predicted.

As the U.S. Border Patrol can attest, migration cannot be halted along the 2,000-mile divide between the two countries. Trying to stop migration would require internal check points, such as those now used to inspect for drugs or Central American migrants, said Lopez Castro.

That might not be effective--considering the continuing flow of drugs and Central Americans into the United States--and it could be explosive. Restricting Mexicans’ movements within their own country would be unconstitutional.

To complicate matters, presidential elections are coming up next year and many of the states that traditionally send migrants north are opposition strongholds. A crackdown on migrants at the behest of the United States would be a strong, nationalist issue for opposition parties.

In addition, seriously attempting to stop people before they cross the border would sour the government’s relations with migrants in the United States, a group the administration has worked hard to cultivate in recent years.

The government has widely promoted a special program called Paisano , or countryman, created to assure migrants that Mexican customs and immigration officials will not harass them when they come home to visit.

Mexican governors pay yearly visits to their constituents in the United States, mainly to inspire them to keep sending money home.

“Migration has been an aspirin for regional economies,” said Lopez Castro. The flow of dollars into migrant communities has helped cushion the effects of Mexico’s economic stagnation, he said. Without migrants--and the dollars they send home--problems in many rural communities would be much more severe.

Immigrants from five states even have been incorporated into official government development programs. The migrants propose a development project, such as a shopping center, and raise funds to finance it. The state and federal governments match those funds, tripling what the migrants donate.

Such projects have helped create goodwill between the government and often-estranged migrant communities, which the Salinas administration is not likely to destroy lightly.

Still, Castaneda noted, “so far, every time the government has had to make a choice between a Mexican constituency and NAFTA, NAFTA has won.”