Immigration, the Mexican Elite, and the DemocratsMaimon Schwarzschild

George Grayson offers a detailed report on how the Mexican political elite pays itself lavishly, presides over a corrupt and low-quality system of public education, systematically obstructs entrpreneurship and economic opportunity for the Mexican people, and self-righteously demands that the United States should solve Mexico’s resulting social crises by opening the US borders to practically unlimited immigration.

Mexican politicians continuously demand more visas for their citizens, an expanded guest-worker program, and “regularization” of illegal aliens living north of the Rio Grande. While neglecting to mention that the United States admits nearly one million legal newcomers each year, they also fail to publicize: (1) the extremely high salaries they receive, often in the case of federal and state legislators more than their counterparts in developed nations that have substantially longer annual sessions, (2) the generous stipends that they grant themselves, including year-end aguinaldos and end-of-term bonuses of tens of thousands of dollars known as bonos de marcha, and (3) the generous sums that party leaders in legislative bodies have to spend with few or any strings attached.

[Mexican] policy makers (1) spend painfully little on education and health-care programs crucial to spurring social mobility and job opportunities, (2) acquiesce in barriers to opening businesses in their country, and (3) profit from a level of corruption that would have made a Tammany Hall precinct captain blush with $11.2 billion flowing to lawmakers in 2004 alone.

Many Mexican officials enjoy princely lifestyles, while expecting the United States to solve their social problems by allowing the border to serve as a safety-valve for job seekers.

Geography, self-interests, and humanitarian concern mean that the United States and Mexico must cooperate on myriad issues, not the least of which is immigration. The material presented in this Backgrounder indicates that Mexico s elite has failed through omission and commission to make the difficult decisions necessary to use its country s enormous wealth to benefit the 50 percent of people who live in poverty. U.S. leaders and the American public have every right to insist that Mexican officials act responsibly, rather than expecting that their neighbor to the North will shoulder burdens that they themselves should assume.

Grayson provides comprehensive evidence, statistical and otherwise.  Read the whole thing.

Meantime, there is a convergence of interests between the Mexican elite and the leadership of the Democratic Party in the US.  For example, Mark Krikorian cites Barney Frank (D. Mass.) – from the National Journal, May 12, 2007 – who puts it, as it were, with disarming frankness: opening the floodgates of immigration may be bad for American workers, but it’s good for them in the long run because the immigrants will vote Democratic, and electing Democrats is good for labour unions – which in the Democrats’ view, if not necessarily in anyone else’s, is the best thing for working people.

As Krikorian says, Barney Frank is of course right about the Democrats’ partisan stake in uncontrolled immigration, but why are Republicans helping him?