Immigration and Migration

This past week I talked with PBS NewsHour about Mexico’s upcoming elections, economic transformations, and deep ties with the United States. I look forward to your feedback in the comment section and on twitter. As Mexicans move to elect a new president on July 1, whoever wins the keys to the official residence, or Los Pinos, will be tied to the United States in a number of ways: on border security, as trading partners, and as a top energy supplier to its northern neighbor. "There’s probably no other country in the world that’s as intertwined with the United States. Our economies are intertwined; Mexico is now the second destination for U.S. exports and the third largest trading partner overall," said Shannon O’Neil, fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. The U.S. automotive, food, and computer and electronics industries depend on Mexican consumers, said O’Neil. "For twenty one out of fifty states, Mexico is the No. 1 or No. 2 destination for their exports," she said. "And it’s not just the states on the border that have huge trade with Mexico, but as far away as New Hampshire, Vermont, Michigan and Indiana." Mexico also is a friendly source of oil, O’Neil noted. It’s the United States’ third largest supplier behind Canada and Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. "So keeping our lights on and our cars going depend today much on Mexico," she said. Since the two countries share a border, they also share the problems and responsibilities of regulating the environment, preventing drug trafficking and maintaining security. Every president of Mexico has had a different take on U.S. relations, but all of the top contenders in the current race have indicated they will work with the United States, said O’Neil. The economy in Mexico is recovering faster than the United States. Helping transform Mexico’s economy is a growing middle class, she said. View a chart of GDP growth in both countries: "Thirty-plus years ago, Mexico was a commodity-driven, oil-driven, inward-looking economy," said O’Neil. "Today it is a manufacturing and services-based economy, export-led with a focus on the U.S. market and that is fundamentally different than just a few decades ago." Partly because of Mexico’s economic growth, immigration between the two countries has slowed to a net zero last year. The slowdown also can be attributed to a demographic shift in Mexico in the last several years, O’Neil said. "There are fewer Mexicans turning eighteen and looking for jobs than there were in the past. And more and more Mexicans are staying in school longer and investing in their future and investing in their skills. So they’re not leaving the country. They’re not thinking about going abroad at fifteen or sixteen anymore, they’re staying in school." Mexico is becoming an increasingly urban society as well, said O’Neil. "So the old days of a campesino (peasant) wearing a sombrero riding a burro—it’s a reality for a few Mexicans now, but very few. It’s a more urban society. And that’s a total transformation from back in the fifties or sixties." Helping drive the current conditions is a transformed government. "There are still problems with corruption, accountability and transparency—in particular at the state level," she said. "But it also is a democracy. They’re about to have elections that almost everywhere in the world people think are going to be free and fair. And that’s something new."

The Renewing America initiative is publishing today the first of what will be an ongoing series, the Renewing America Progress Report and accompanying Infographic Scorecard. The series is intended to highlight – in both a visually compelling fashion and in a more detailed narrative – the challenges the United States faces in rebuilding the foundations of its economic strength, and some of the initiatives that show the greatest promise. Our first installment, “Road to Nowhere,” says it all in the title. Transportation infrastructure is one of the pillars of a modern competitive economy. It allows people to travel to and from work easily every day. It permits goods to move quickly from U.S. factories to international markets, or from coastal ports to American retail shops, boosting productivity. It lets us hop in the car, or on a train or plane to escape for the weekend or a longer holiday, improving our quality of life and making the United States a more attractive place to live. Americans understood this once upon a time, building the most impressive network of roads and airports in the world, as well as a solid freight rail system. But for far too long we have been living on that inheritance. Two data points from the Scorecard stand out: Since 1980, the number of highway miles traveled by American drivers has doubled, but the miles of road on which they’re driving have increased just 5 percent. It’s no mystery, as the report notes, why traffic congestion takes more than $700 out of the pocket of the average commuter each year. Two-thirds of Americans say that fully funding transportation infrastructure is either “extremely important” or “very important” to them. Yet solid majorities are opposed to any of the usual ways of funding new roads, including higher gas taxes or new tolls. It would be easy to point a finger at Congress, and we certainly do in the report. Reauthorization of the surface transportation bill, usually known as the highway bill, has always been contentious, but nevertheless it used to win approval routinely. But the last multi-year bill expired in 2009 and has been replaced by a series of short-term extensions that make rational construction planning all but impossible for state and local governments. The bill expires again June 30th, and congressional leaders again look unlikely to reach agreement and are predicting another short-term extension. It will be the 10th; as a Miami Herald editorial put it recently, this marks “a new low in congressional irresponsibility.” But congressional inaction in many ways reflects public ambivalence. Americans want uncluttered highways, efficient airports, and seamless mass transit systems, but they are either reluctant to pay for these things or doubt the ability of governments to deliver. The overdue backlash against pork barrel politics for favored projects, for instance, seems to have hardened into a deeper public cynicism about the ability of government to deliver any needed public works. Even proposals like using a federal seed money to create a National Infrastructure Bank that would funnel private investor (not taxpayer) money into new projects have been unable to get through Congress. There are encouraging signs from some state and local governments. Chicago is launching a $7 billion Infrastructure Trust that will rely primarily on private investor capital to finance city projects. New York state has created a new state infrastructure bank  intended to leverage $15 billion in investments into state projects. But most big projects, and all interstate projects, require some active federal role, and that is still missing. One of the more tragic aspects of the federal gridlock over infrastructure is that the United States is missing a golden opportunity that the rest of the world is handing us, and one that probably won’t last for long. The turmoil in Europe and the lack of developed capital markets in the rest of the world have led investors to continue buying up U.S. Treasuries at record low interest rates that are not even keeping pace with inflation. They are paying the U.S. government, in other words, to hold their money. And they are doing so despite big U.S. budget deficits that in more normal times would drive interest rates higher. The United States should use some of that free money -- along with the plentiful private capital that is searching for stable returns -- to invest in projects that promise long-term payoffs in improved productivity that will strengthen the U.S. economy, as well as provide a much-needed short-term boost in employment. As the Progress Report and Scorecard clearly demonstrate, the United States has a lot of catching up to do. Now is the time to start.  

Following rioting against Africans concentrated in a south Tel Aviv neighborhood, Prime Minister Netanyahu has announced that the repatriation will be accelerated of some twenty-five thousand illegal African immigrants. Most of those affected are from South Sudan, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Ethiopia, and include children born in Israel. According to the press, there are 52,487 illegal economic migrants in Israel. The Netanyahu government has been taking a hard line against illegal immigration. According to the press, the deportation of hundreds of south Asians and their Israeli-born children is currently underway. Netanyahu has acknowledged that those who have refugee status as defined by international conventions that Israel has signed cannot be deported. They are mostly from Eritrea and Sudan. He has also ordered the acceleration of the construction of a camp in the Negev for those who cannot return to their home countries. According to the press, Netanyahu in the past has characterized African asylum seekers as a “threat” to Israel’s “Jewish and democratic character.” The press reports that since 2009, of the forty-five thousand migrants that attempted to enter through Egypt, only three were granted asylum requests. Israel faces an African migration conundrum not dissimilar from that of southern European countries, especially Italy and Spain. For decades Israel has carefully cultivated improved relations with sub-Saharan African states. The deportations will undercut that effort, especially if they are widely publicized in Africa. Already there is African commentary that the accelerated deportations “provide further evidence of the inherently racist nature of political Zionism.”

A recent Pew Hispanic Center report highlights the rather steep declines in the number of Mexicans coming to the United States, as well as the rising numbers leaving for Mexico. Taken together, they show that net migration from 2005 to 2010 reached zero—with inflows and outflows of some 1.4 million individuals (a rough average of 280,000 a year) cancelling each other out. This is a huge migratory shift, and one that reflects many things, including a weaker U.S. economy, a stronger Mexican economy, changing Mexican demographics, rising deportations, and enhanced border security. Another migratory change has also occurred: of the Mexicans that still come to the United States, many more do so legally. At the start of the twenty-first century, less than 10 percent came with papers. A decade later, it is 50 percent. The vast majority of these came on “family reunification visas”—spouses, parents, children, or siblings of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.  Others—some ninety thousand in 2011—came on H-visas to work, their professions ranging from engineers to agricultural workers. Ten thousand more came to study. Some two thousand—more than double 2000 levels—came on E-2 NAFTA visas, reserved for investors and business people from countries that are U.S. trading partners. Mexicans also received their highest ever number of EB-5 visas, which require a $500,000 to $1 million investment in a U.S. business, and the creation of at least ten U.S. jobs. The rise in legal immigration has the potential to alter the political debate, as it lessens the law and order challenges. But some will still be concerned about the role of this large group of immigrants, believing as the late Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington did, that Mexican immigrants “threaten to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages.” Perhaps a final trend can help allay these worries. In the past decade, one million Mexicans swore their allegiance to the U.S. and became citizens—surpassing all other nationalities—a sure sign of their desire to become Americans.

The Council on Foreign Relations held a half day symposium this past Tuesday entitled “U.S-Mexico Relations Beyond the 2012 Elections.” The first panel with Alejandro Hope, Eric Olson, and myself focused on U.S.-Mexico security cooperation. We started off discussing the recent drop in violence in the first quarter of the year, and then turned to how cooperation could and should continue (but shift) with the next U.S. and Mexican administrations, stressing the need to strengthen Mexico’s civilian law enforcement and criminal justice institutions. The second panel concentrated on U.S.-Mexico economic ties, and the ever deepening economic integration between the two nations. The panelists, Gerardo Esquivel, Claudio X. Gonzalez, and Carla A. Hills, reflected on how much Mexico’s economy has transformed in the last nearly twenty years since NAFTA, and took a hard look at where it still needs to go. The discussion also looked at the unsung benefits to the United States, and the need to work from the bottom up to change the nature of today’s political debates on issues such as trade and immigration. The final luncheon panel brought together two long time scholars and practitioners, Bob Pastor of American University and Jorge Castañeda, former Mexican Foreign Minister. Their conversation looked forward, to where Mexico could and might go if it can improve its security situation and harness the power of its growing middle class. Both presented the possibilities for an active and dynamic bilateral future, though for this to happen, they felt Mexico would have to lead that effort. While the headlines usually paint a pessimistic view—whether of the situation on the ground in Mexico or of the politics on Mexican oriented issues in the United States—many of the panelists offered a different take. The question for all though was how the next two administrations will take on the many pressing issues, and if they will choose to work together or apart. To listen to audio from the first panel click here, for the second panel click here, and for the third panel click here.

The sixth Summit of the Americas on April 14-15 is part of an intense spring of bilateral and regional interactions in the hemisphere. It will bring together thirty-three heads of state from nearly every member of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Cartegena, Colombia, to discuss regional issues ranging from expanding economic ties to turning back a surge in criminal activity. For the United States, this summit poses two main challenges. The first, largely overcome, is Cuba. In recent weeks, tensions have been high over Cuba’s exclusion from the OAS and its events. The Obama administration has repeated longstanding U.S. arguments that Cuba does not meet the OAS requirements of being a democratic nation. Most Latin American countries tend to see this ongoing exclusion (as well as U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba in general) as counterproductive. Through deft diplomacy, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos found a solution--Raul Castro would stay home, but Cuba’s future participation would be discussed. In the end, only Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa made good on the threat of the ALBA bloc (comprising Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and several island nations) to not attend without Cuba. The second challenge is to make actual progress on the agenda. The discussions will range from strengthening institutions for disaster preparedness to poverty and inequality reduction, regional infrastructure projects, and access to technology. One topic likely to dominate the meeting is security, and in particular the issue of drug legalization. A number of Latin American presidents past and present have supported the idea. Washington has said it is willing to listen to the discussion, though the National Security Council’s Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Dan Restrepo, confirmed that "the Obama administration has been quite clear in [its] opposition to the decriminalization or legalization of illicit drugs." Agreement on any of the region’s crowded list of complicated issues will be difficult. It may be harder still this year due to presidential elections in the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic. As a result, there is little the United States can promise politically. It would be better for OAS states to focus on economic and energy issues, which will be propelled not just by governments but also by the private sector. A parallel CEO summit in Colombia, with more than 500 corporate leaders due to attend, could provide a further prompt for deal-making. Whatever the takeaways, the summit will provide, as it has in the past, a useful forum for heads of state and their staffs to come together and focus on issues of regional importance, and an opportunity for the United States to engage leaders in the region. Hemispheric Power Diplomacy The wave of recent U.S. diplomacy highlights the primacy of bilateral engagement with Latin America’s two largest countries: Mexico and Brazil. In March, Vice President Joseph Biden visited Mexico’s capital, meeting with President Felipe Calderón as well as the three leading presidential candidates. On April 2, President Obama hosted Calderón, along with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in Washington for the North American Leaders summit. Economic and security issues dominated the bilateral and trilateral discussions as the three nations worked to deepen the benefits of NAFTA, now nearing its twentieth anniversary. The diplomacy with Brazil has been even more energetic. In late March, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey met in Brazil with Defense Minister Antonio Celso Amorim and top-ranking military official General José Carlos de Nardi to discuss issues ranging from transnational crime to cyber warfare. President Dilma Rousseff’s April 9 visit to Washington included discussions with President Obama on economic ties, education, and U.S. monetary policy, among other issues. In Washington, and during her speeches at Harvard and MIT, she touted Brazil’s new Science Without Borders program, which plans to send up to one hundred thousand Brazilians abroad to study in the next few years, the majority to the United States. After the summit, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will head to Brazil to meet with their counterparts on a range of issues. These stepped-up interchanges highlight the new reality that for most regional issues--democracy, trade, environment, or security--the United States’ ability to make progress will depend on Brazil. These visits help lay the groundwork for a longer-term mature relationship with a rising Brazil on a world stage. Expanding Robust Trade The recent flurry of exchanges provide a strong base for refocusing U.S. relations in the region, recognizing the importance of the hemisphere for the country’s well-being. This should start with trade. Latin America today represents a good economic news story for the United States. Trade with Latin America has grown faster than virtually any other region in the world, reaching nearly a trillion dollars. U.S. shipments to its southern neighbors now total some $350 billion annually, roughly a quarter of all exports. With somewhat complementary industries and economies, expanding these sales further can benefit all sides. Energy too provides a promising opening, not just for the economies in the region but also for shifting the fraught geopolitical balance for the better. Brazil’s huge oil finds, Colombia’s rising output, and the possibility of renewed exploration and production in Mexico (if the next president reforms the oil sector to allow foreign direct investment in the same manner as Brazil’s Petrobras), would all benefit the United States. The hemisphere is also a renewable energy leader, with wind, solar, hydroelectric, and ethanol. If integrated, these alternative sources could further the quest for a cleaner and more competitive energy matrix worldwide. Finally, drug trafficking and organized crime networks increasingly affect public security across the hemisphere. This may perhaps be the most difficult area for agreement, as more nations now question the policies of the longstanding U.S. war on drugs. But with the threats transnational in origin, so too must be the responses, building and expanding on current regional coordination. The recent high levels of diplomatic engagement between the United States and many Latin American nations are in many ways just governments catching up with the already deep ties on the ground among families, communities, corporations, and supply chains. Sustaining this interest after the Summit of the Americas will serve Washington well, benefiting the U.S. economy, society, and global position as it tackles more recalcitrant problems worldwide.

While Brazil and Mexico (in good and bad ways) tend to fill U.S. headlines regarding Latin America, other nations matter as well for the United States. Among them are the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Though combined their populations total less than thirty million people, these small nations arguably have an outsized effect on the United States, due to a long history of migration and a now growing role in the hemispheric drug pipeline. A new Council Special Report, “Countering Criminal Violence in Central America,” looks at the challenges facing these countries today, and offers up recommendations for the United States to help its southern neighbors. It argues that the spike in violence in the past decade comes from both organized and common crime, which has taken advantage of the lack of resources and often will of overburdened police and judicial authorities. The author, Michael Shifter, argues that without outside assistance the situation will continue to worsen. The report lays blame at home—on unresponsive economic elites and the countries’ shockingly low tax revenue collection. But it also challenges the limited funding provided by the United States and international organizations as these nations confront well funded and sophisticated international organized crime networks. It highlights the perverse effects of the current U.S. deportation policy, which has sent over a million people back to communities ravaged by poverty, weak governments, and few opportunities outside of organized crime—in effect supplying criminal groups with fresh recruits. The report recommends that the United States focus its security assistance on strengthening these countries’ judicial systems and law enforcement agencies, and by providing support for broader regional and international cooperation and sharing of best practices. It calls for the United States to work to lower drug demand, restrict gun sales, and share more information about deportees’ criminal histories with Central American governments. Unlike Mexico, where U.S. funds will remain a small percentage of the resources dedicated to security, a few hundred million dollars in Central America could make a considerable difference. And these three governments today are willing to work closely with the United States, desperate to ebb the violence. With both the need and the will working together, the report concludes, this is an opportunity the United States shouldn’t waste.

Much has been written about the rise of restrictive immigration laws in states such as Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia, both by those for and against these measures. What is now emerging are initial assessments of the economic costs and benefits of these policies. One area affected is employment. Supporters of these laws argue that by discouraging undocumented migrants these policies free up jobs for native workers. So far the preliminary evidence suggests otherwise. In Georgia, 56 percent of farmers report having difficulty finding workers, and nearly half of restaurant owners claim to be experiencing a labor shortage (while overall employment numbers in Georgia increased since the law was passed–coinciding with the U.S. economic recovery–they have not increased in sectors traditionally employing unauthorized workers, a better measure of the effects of the law). Other reports on Alabama and California also show or predict widespread drops in total employment, and the elimination of thousands of jobs due to less intended consequences of the new laws. A broader more technical study done by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas estimates that cities with restrictive immigration laws lower local employment numbers by nearly 20 percent, compared to similar cities without such ordinances. One reason the report suggests is that immigrants largely complement rather than substitute native workers, expanding jobs for all. Looking at the overall state level economic effects, the picture does not get better. A cost-benefit analysis by University of Alabama researcher Samuel Addy predicts that the effects of law HB56 on Alabama’s GDP will range from two billion to nearly eleven billion dollars (roughly 1 to 6 percent of Alabama’s GDP), depending on how many of the state’s unauthorized workers actually “self-deport”– i.e., leave the state. A separate report, written in October 2011, by Tom Baxter at the Center for American Progress states that Georgia could lose between $300 million and $1 billion a year due to its new immigration legislation. These costs come in part from the many roles illegal immigrants play in local economies. They are not only workers, but also consumers. They and their families pay rent, shop at the local supermarket, clean their clothes at the laundromat, go out to dinner, and buy clothes at the mall. Their departure from a state means less business for local stores (and less tax revenue for local and state governments). There are areas where the state could end up saving money: K-12 education and healthcare being the most talked about. However, these areas may also not be as straightforward for cutting costs as many may have thought, with some commentators pointing to lost revenue from federal funding and the associated costs of checking student’s migrant statuses as mandated in Alabama’s laws. An article by Arizona Central, a Phoenix local newspaper, speculated that if every undocumented immigrant disappeared from Arizona, the estimated savings for healthcare and education combined would be in the millions, much less than the projected billions in economic losses. While the motivations behind many of these laws may be to improve the economic prospects for U.S. citizens, the early results show instead the opposite–increased costs for natives and non-natives alike.  

When a measure of economic stability returned to Zimbabwe, South Africa dismantled its special treatment regimes for refugees from that country. It now requires entry permits, work permits, and imposes other requirements which, according to a human rights NGO, are consistent with international practice. However, xenophobia remains in job-starved South Africa, and the under-trained and poorly paid police often have been unduly rough with Zimbabweans. The Central Methodist Mission in downtown Johannesburg has a tradition of social activism dating back to apartheid times. Originally a white congregation, it now is almost entirely black, thoroughly middle class in appearance, though its bishop is white. During the height of the anti-Zimbabwean xenophobia, it began providing a place for refugees and migrants to sleep. It provides no food or bedding, but does facilitate entry into a primary school. My interlocutor said that the facility is unsafe, because there is no control over entrance into the church. Apparently, criminals prey on the the residents. Our intern, Melissa Bukuru, discussed the shelter and other immigrant spaces in a blog about intra-continental immigration earlier this year, after she returned from Johannesburg. My research associate, Asch Harwood, and I also visited the Central Methodist Mission over the past weekend. Our guide told us that more than a thousand people sleep in the Sunday school rooms, corridors, and along the steps. Even mid-afternoon the overcrowding was oppressive. Only a few residents had small, curtained-off areas. Everybody else slept where they could. Children were everywhere, and daily activities were underway: cooking, laundry, etc. Our guide told us that one toilet served five hundred people. To me, conditions were squalid, and the facility was a firetrap. But, residents have no other place to go. There are periodic police raids in search of illegal aliens (probably a large percentage of the residents), but, thus far, the bishop has managed to get them to back off. I was told that the congregation is split over hosting the Zimbabweans (and others). Probably the majority want their facility back. But the bishop is adamant and so far has carried the day. The Central Methodist Mission is stark testimony to the mayhem that disfigured Zimbabwe in the past and may do so again. It also illustrates the very high cost to South Africa of the Mugabe regime.

The tragic murder of a British and Italian hostage in northern Nigeria and the video on Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army that has “gone viral” has largely deflected attention away from a seeming tea pot tempest in the bilateral relationship between Nigeria and South Africa. Last week, the South African immigration authorities “deported” (did not allow to enter the country) 125 Nigerians whom, they alleged, presented false yellow fever vaccination certificates. Nigeria retaliated by refusing entry to 84 South Africans arriving in Lagos, claiming that they, too, were traveling on irregular documents. Especially on the Nigerian side, there was some chest thumping commentary to the effect that not only was South Africa "dissing" the Giant of Africa, its businessmen are also unscrupulously making money. The minister of foreign affairs took the opportunity to warn South African firms against bringing in their co-citizens when there were qualified Nigerians to do the work. Elsewhere, there was other commentary to the effect that South Africa’s economic wings in Nigeria should be clipped—not good for encouraging South African investment, as the Nigerian government wants to do. The Nigerian and South African foreign ministries moved to damp down the tempest, and the South African government issued an apology. The episode spotlights a complicated relationship between the two giants of Africa. During the apartheid era, Nigeria regarded itself as a “front line” state, and South Africa was popularly regarded as the national enemy. Nigerians are proud of their forthright stance against apartheid, and some feel that post-apartheid South Africa shows insufficient gratitude for its role. Following the coming of non-racial democracy to South Africa, Abuja and Pretoria have been fervent about their fraternal solidarity. South African business leaders are enthusiastic about the investment opportunities in Nigeria, in particular because of the country’s enormous population. To cite only a few examples, South African telecommunications firms have done well, dominating the industry in Nigeria. A South African company has opened high-profile shopping centers in Nigeria, and South African banks eye opportunities. At the popular level, however, Nigerians are widely disliked in South Africa. They are a large legal and illegal community and South Africans routinely blame them for crime and as a source of corruption. Despite the fraternal rhetoric, especially on the Nigerian side, there is a degree of ambiguity about the relationship. The Nigerian government trumpets a goal of becoming among the world’s twenty largest economies by 2020, and its rhetoric often features overcoming in size the South African economy. At times, “overtaking” South Africa appears to function as a unifying national goal, in a country that has few such sources of unity. With respect to diplomacy, Nigeria wants a permanent African seat on the UN Security Council; South Africa is its principal rival. Nigeria and South Africa frequently take different positions on African regional issues, as they did most recently over Libya. This particular tempest will blow over but the rivalry between Africa’s two giants will not. South African entry documentation requirements will remain a potential flashpoint. Counterfeit travel documents are ubiquitous in Nigeria, while Nigerians resent the South African yellow fever vaccine requirement, which is levied only on those nationals of countries identified by the WHO as potential sources of the disease. (South Africa levies no such requirement on Americans –unless they are coming from WHO-identified states.) But, the Nigerian minister of health observes that the last confirmed case of yellow fever was in 1995. He questions the WHO designation.