Op-Ed by Chuck Coughlin – Arizona Republic 07-07-2010
Calls for comprehensive immigration reform will not be answered until the American people are convinced that we are in control of our borders. Upward of 70 percent of our nation’s voters believe that our country is on the wrong track and that Washington, D.C., cannot be trusted.
It is outrageous that President Obama and his administration are suing Arizona because we are taking steps to secure our border – a job the federal government has failed to do. So we do their job and they sue us – only in Washington, D.C., does this make sense!
Reality is, the American people are fed up with broken government – Wall Street bailouts, broken promises to address the mortgage crisis, soaring government deficits, stock market roller-coaster uncertainty, and a health-care proposal that complicates an already opaque issue and promises further debt.
Calls for comprehensive immigration reform are like focusing all of our efforts at cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf before stopping the gusher at the bottom of the ocean. So what can we do, what should we do and who should do it?
We can control our border. There is no other country in the world that tolerates the type of situation that exists on our border with Mexico. We do not permit any other nation to wantonly violate the integrity of our border. Why do we permit it with Mexico? Is it because the United States still treats Central and South American countries as vestiges of a bygone era in which the Monroe Doctrine implied that these countries were our de-facto colonies?
Have we gone nearly 200 years and not come to grips with the fact that this policy has created a soft bigotry of low expectations, in which we fail to cultivate a mature relationship with our country’s fourth-largest (Arizona’s largest) trading partner?
The immigration crisis confronting our country is one of “pay me now or pay me later.” Over the next two decades, if Arizona’s economy is to thrive, it will be because Arizona has demanded that we create a legal and secure framework to grow our economy, and that of Mexico’s, together.
If we fail to use this opportunity to bring about long-term reform we surely will reap the whirlwind of a large-scale refugee crisis as Mexico’s economy sinks into a morass of violence perpetrated by the drug and human smuggling cartels that are profiting from the lawlessness that has infected that country.
We are engaged in a struggle with a state capitalist system in Mexico that refuses to live up the tenants of the NAFTA agreement to democratize its own economy – eliminating corruption and failing to provide greater access to capital for the maquiladora manufacturing operations that were intended to create a greater middle class in Mexico.
Why, as a country, are we so focused on our own treatment of illegal aliens when the real approbation should be focused on Mexico for the treatment of its own people? Ask yourself the question, why would you want to leave your own country so badly that you would risk dying in the desert, being kidnapped by a coyote or being forced to smuggle drugs across the border and face imprisonment?
Why aren’t we demanding that Mexico democratize its economy, create opportunities for its own citizens and mature into the trading partner and ally that American and Arizona surely needs?
Doesn’t anyone see the irony of the story in The Republic on June 17: “Mexican investment in U.S. companies soaring”? A new kind of Mexican immigrant is making it big in the United States. Huge Mexican corporations are opening U.S. factories and investing millions of pesos north of the border. Can we not see the similarities of regimes past; shahs, dictators and oligarchs fleeing a failing country for the perceived financial security of U.S. markets?
Surely, it is in Arizona’s best interests to demand resolution to this crisis before being overwhelmed by an oncoming greater refugee crisis. The fruits of the current struggle can be reaped by demanding that our weak political culture in our nation’s capital do one thing right first – secure our border now.
