Commentary
The United States is in chaos, partly because Mexico is in chaos. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (
AMLO) is considered a “left-wing populist” and “nationalist with an authoritarian streak trying to centralize power.” He is so close to
China,
Russia, and
Iran that one must ask: Is he part of the
axis of evil?
The flow of illegal immigrants and fentanyl—without much resistance from AMLO—certainly indicates as much.
Thousands of Americans die annually of drug overdose, mostly from illegal fentanyl manufactured by Mexican cartels with Chinese precursors. Likewise, the Biden administration does little to stop it.
AMLO must be asking why he should help the United States police its own border. The U.S. Border Patrol, which could do the job alone if given the green light, is instead so welcoming that its agents might as well divert the Rio Grande, roll out the red carpet, cosplay waiters with silver trays, and distribute champagne flutes to anyone and everyone who clambers over the Texan barbed wire.
Apparently, cheap labor is more important to the Democrats, beholden as they are to wealthy campaign donors, than enforcing the law. In a disconnect between what corporate America perceives and what the rest of us know, one executive noted to
Automotive News in November: “We haven’t had any meaningful immigration. That, obviously, is going to impact the bottom of the market significantly. The availability of new workers coming in is going to be a problem.”
A
Harvard researcher wrote in August, “American policymakers need to wake up to a new reality: The country is running out of workers, and immigration must be part of the solution.”
Will relatively high American wages be sacrificed on the theory that millions of illegal immigrants at the “bottom of the market” will strengthen the American workforce and economy to make our corporations more profitable (and our military more competitive)?
We know that Beijing, for example, is frantically pressuring its women to have more babies because
China started losing population in 2022. The ladies aren’t showing much interest. China had about
850,000 fewer people that year compared to the last. China’s population is expected to drop from 1.4 billion today to just about half a billion in 2100. India is now the world’s most populous country.
The U.S. population is also going gangbusters, with increases of about
0.3 percent annually starting in 2020 and 0.5 percent starting in 2022. Immigration is part of that growth, which buoys the economy. The attraction of America—including the success of our free market democracy—is what brings plucky immigrants across the seas (and the Rio) and helps them integrate quickly, eventually contributing economically rather than living on handouts. A strong economy helps fund the U.S. defense budgets that made the world as safe for democracy as it can be, from World War I and World War II to the Cold War, the War on Terror, and now Ukraine.
But the Biden administration knows this narrative will not sell to isolationists in November. And it does not address that we could do the same thing, better, if we rationalized immigration by only admitting legal immigrants of exactly the type our economy needs.
That would not be enough for the corporations. They want lots of immigrants, legal or not, for low-skilled labor. So the Biden administration attempts a side-whistle forever more, ushering them over the fence quietly while avoiding state and congressional demands for transparency.
The Democrats want the new immigrants, as the Hispanics before them, to become Democrat voters. But they will be in for a surprise. Most now come from authoritarian socialist countries—like
Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua—and will want to mitigate the risk of recreating those problems in their new land. The new immigrants will likely become Republicans, as did those who fled communist Russia, China, and Vietnam in the past.
Meanwhile, the administration shoots itself in the foot by lifting sanctions on Venezuela, promoting Cuban tourism, and doing next to nothing about the Mexican cartels. According to Anastasia O’Grady at The Wall Street Journal, “Mexico is backsliding on the rule of law, and the United States remains eerily silent. One glaring example is the administration’s handling of Mexico’s violation of the energy chapter of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement” by discriminating against Western investors, including the seizure of their assets.
AMLO has additional leftist
demands that he attempts to leverage via immigration “
blackmail.” He detailed them on Jan. 5 in a press conference that raised some brows. In exchange for helping stop the migrants, AMLO wants President Joe Biden to end the blockade of Cuba, give $20 billion to Latin America and the Caribbean, legalize 10 million Hispanic immigrants, and stop Venezuela sanctions.
President Biden painted himself into a corner of weakness by not getting tougher sooner on the issues of immigration and fentanyl, up to and including air strikes on cartels. In addition, we ought to take a cue from AMLO’s demands that he has sympathy for the axis of evil. Therefore, broad sanctions and tariffs are in order. The 1994 free trade agreement with our neighbor to the south should become a thing of the past. That would give us leverage against AMLO and any apparently compromised Mexican president who follows.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
