Former Mexican Foreign Minister Critical of U.S. Immigration Policy

The United States is on the wrong track in its attempts to deal with immigration, says Dr. Jorge Castañeda, and proposed solutions could make the problem worse. Casteñeda served as Mexico’s foreign minister in the Vicente Fox administration.

Speaking at Minnesota State University, Mankato on April 26, Castañeda said U.S. immigration problems with Mexico are not new, but that today’s difficulties stem primarily from two decisions made during the Clinton administration.

The first was to leave out immigration issues from the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Europeans, in contrast, include the exchange of human capital in all their trade agreements.

The second was Pres. Bill Clinton’s decision in 1996 to enforce more rigidly U.S. immigration laws. Historically, the U.S.-Mexican border has been surprisingly porous regardless of immigration law. Workers from Mexico, and Central and Latin American nations came into the U.S. primarily for seasonal agricultural jobs. After those jobs ended, they returned home.

But by sealing off the border and building the first fences, he said, the U.S. effectively forced Latino workers to stay here, because repeated crossings of the border became both dangerous and expensive. It was then that they began finding year-round work in food processing, service industries and construction. Castañeda said that the annual flow of Latin American immigrants to the U.S. remained the same, but they stopped returning to their home countries. This was exacerbated by a double standard in U.S. law that required employers to check employees’ identification but not to verify it.

“Despite his intelligence,” Castañeda said, “Clinton never understood immigration.”

more insideCastañeda called the Bush administration’s concept of building fences to keep out immigrants “profoundly stupid.” Instead, the U.S. should invest in Mexico much like the wealthier nations of the European Union have invested in poorer ones. “Why is Germany building highways in Spain?” he said. “Because it’s good for the German economy.”

Castañeda emphasized that if North America is going to have free trade in goods and services, it must also support free trade in labor. He pointed out that Ireland has successfully imported workers from Poland, benefiting both countries.

Wholesale deportation of illegal immigrants is both impractical and expensive, he said. Furthermore, 1 million U.S. citizens live in Mexico. Imagine the effect that such a deportation would have on them.

While avoiding a call for wholesale amnesty, Castañeda said the only solution was to follow the European example of allowing labor to freely cross borders while retaining citizenship in their own countries. “That meatpacking plant in Iowa — if it can’t get the labor it needs here, it’ll simply move to Mexico.”

Dr. Castañeda was born in Mexico City, and received a B.A. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Paris. He currently teaches at New York University, writes periodically for Newsweek and other publications, and is a MacArthur Fellow and board member of Human Rights Watch.