George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 30 August 2017.]

Lately, among all the other lambasting of President Trump relating to a flood of new happenings, the notorious border ‘wall’ between the US and Mexico has again surfaced in the news.  The major points of interest in the wall should be how well it will work, how much will it cost, and whether Mexico would chip in to build it.

First, let’s disabuse ourselves of the political cartoons depicting a high solid wall with periodic armed watchtowers stretching across the mountains and deserts of the American southwest.  Anyone with an ounce, OK, make that two ounces of brains knows that the real issue here is border porosity.  There is not going to be a wall, per se, stretching from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico.  Instead, there will be added barriers of different kinds, new sensing devices, more border patrol observation posts, high tech drones with infrared cameras, and the inevitable vehicle patrols to stop the illegal entrants.  After all is said and done, our concern remains the resulting porosity defined by the number of illegal aliens, many carrying cartel drugs, who still make it through every year.

Mexico’s decision to contribute to the wall’s construction hinges on the effects of a porous border on their economy, the political optics already in place, and the country’s notoriously corrupt government.  Ultimately, as we all understand, it will come down to the money.

Of today’s 11M illegal aliens living in the US, about 6M are Mexicans, and most of the remainder are other central Americans who have crossed Mexico to enter our country.  Mexico receives almost $25B annually from remittances sent by their workers in America.  The Mexican economy also benefits from a portion of the enormous profits garnered by Mexican drug cartels operating in its northern states.  It is estimated that the cartels annually vacuum into Mexico over $50B from our economy.  Our Department of Justice believes the amount could be much higher.  And under the NAFTA agreement we do almost $600B of trade with Mexico from which it derives a net benefit of about $55B in the balance of payments from the United States.

And then there are the related social factors.  While the situation has improved, Mexico still produces more people than it can employ.  The US border has served as a pressure release valve, but at a cost of making its northern states virtually unlivable, and then having to deal with its own porous southern border over which cross thousands of central Americans heading north, with some also becoming illegal aliens in Mexico.

The successful cartels have made the northern Mexican states into a killing ground, and induced even more killing in the central American states from where much of the drugs originate.  Tens of thousands are slaughtered annually in these territories, making civilized life literally impossible, and giving rise to additional hordes of migrants escaping north to find a tolerable existence.  And the more porous our border, the more inviting it is as an entry point to the United States for both illegal aliens and the drug trafficking cartels.

So why would Mexico chip in for ‘the wall’?  The easy answer is that their government wants to reduce its law enforcement costs and provide northern Mexicans a quality of life that would be possible if the region were no longer valuable territory for the warring cartels.  Additionally, they would want to reduce their own river of illegals crossing over their southern border, causing all kinds of internal problems.  A porous border on their north costs the federal government of Mexico untold billions of dollars annually.  To greatly reduce this drain would provide a major impetus for Mexico to explore cost sharing solutions with us.

However, our cynics say that this will never happen because Mexico is so corrupt at all levels of government that they would never give up the enormous amount of bribe monies that continually fatten the wallets of all Mexican officials charged with controlling the country’s traffic in people and drugs.  But then again, no matter who pays, don’t both sides of these arguments strongly recommend greatly reducing border porosity as the foundation to every successful immigration reform?

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.