LA RAIZ DEL PROBLEMA MIGRATORIO

Desde el fin de semana hemos visto las imágenes de casi un millón de latinos --muchos de ellos emigrantes ilegales-- protestando en las calles de Estados Unidos en contra de las leyes anti-emigrantes que ahora se debaten en el senado americano.

Lo que casi no se mencionó--y ninguna televisora ha tenido los TANATES para preguntar al respecto--es ¿Qué es lo que piensa hacer Fox para resolver el problema de raiz? Por que si bien es necesario que no se persiga como criminales a los emigrantes ilegales, puesto que contribuyen a la economía de Estados Unidos, también mucha gente en Estados Unidos se pregunta qué es lo que va a hacer el gobierno mexicano para resolver el problema. O por lo menos para minimizarlo.

Hoy, la prensa internacional--que no anda de lambegüevos para que le aprueben leyes de telecomunicaciones--sí se la cantó derecha a Fox. Va la nota de Reuters en inglés y luego un resumen en español:

Immigration debate seen skirting root cause

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - President
Vicente Fox paused for a long moment before answering a question on how long it would take Mexico to reach a stage where citizens no longer want to cross the U.S. border to seek work.

"Generations," he finally said.

"It's a long way to narrow the gap ... between incomes in Mexico and on the other side of the border," he said in a recent interview with Reuters.

That income gap is the principal reason why hundreds of thousands of Mexicans cross the border with the U.S. illegally to seek work -- yet it rarely figures in the heated and increasingly emotional debate over immigration now raging in the United States.

Roughly half of Mexico's population lives on less than $5 a day, according to government figures. The U.S. minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. Annual Mexican Gross Domestic Product per capita is just under $7,000. It is almost $44,000 in the United States.

The gap is now wider than it was when Mexico, the United States and Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992.

The treaty took effect two years later and was supposed to generate more jobs in Mexico, raise incomes and, as a consequence, reduce the number of Mexicans crossing the 2,000-mile border with their superpower neighbor, legally or illegally.

That has not happened and the number of Mexicans making the increasingly dangerous and expensive trek north has risen steadily over the past few years.

Mexican experts say that the rival immigration reform bills now being debated in the United States will have limited effect as long as income disparity remains as deep as it is now.

"Migration is a question of supply and demand," said Jorge Bustamante of the Northern Frontier College in Tijuana. "Demand in the U.S. for Mexican labor has been growing. The money is better on the other side. That's the main factor."

Said Jorge Chabat, of Mexico City's Center for Economic Investigation and Teaching (CIDE): "There are two ways to tackle the migration problem: improve the (Mexican) economy or introduce a more flexible (U.S.) border policy, more toward an open border."

That is not likely to happen. Public opinion polls in the United States show that a large majority of Americans are in favor of stricter border controls and even a border wall.

SPAIN, PORTUGAL SEEN AS EXAMPLES

"Average wages in Mexico will eventually rise enough to hold people here," said Federico Estevez, head of the political science department of ITAM, a leading Mexico City university. "It will take time. But huge labor migrations have been stopped before by economic opportunities. Look at Portugal and Spain."

Workers from the two countries used to migrate to Germany and France much in the same way Mexicans have been moving to the United States.

But when the
European Union expanded in the 1980s and adopted new members, including Spain and Portugal, it spent more than $500 billion in aid to narrow the income gap between the newcomers and the most prosperous EU countries. Immigration dropped sharply.

The idea of providing aid to Mexico has not been part of the public discourse in the United States, where the economic conditions of its southern neighbors are seen as their own affair. U.S. proponents of EU-style subsidies to lift Mexico closer to its partners in NAFTA are few and far between.

One of them is Robert Pastor, head of the Center for North American Studies at the American University in Washington. Pastor has for years argued that the U.S., Canada and Mexico should set up a North American investment fund to finance infrastructure projects and shrink the income gap between Mexico and its richer partners.

An investment of $20 billion a year over the next 10 years in Mexico in roads and communications connecting the poor southern part of Mexico to the North American market, Pastor says, would attract new companies to invest in Mexico and encourage many Mexicans to stay home and others to return.

"The idea of funding development in Mexico may sound ludicrous to many," Pastor said, "and it would not end illegal immigration overnight. But it would end it eventually. And besides, it would benefit the U.S. economically."

Va el resumen para los que no hablan inglés:

1. La prensa internacional le preguntó a Fox cuanto tiempo va a tomar para que la situación económica en México sea tal que no force a los mexicanos a cruzar la frontera a Estados Unidos de manera ilegal en busca de trabajo. ¿La respuesta de Fox? "Generaciones."

2. Dice la nota de Reuters que la disparidad económica entre ricos y pobres en México ha crecido desde la firma del tratado de libre comercio. Que en 1992, cuando se firmó el TLC, la propaganda de los gobiernos americano y mexicano (George Bush 1 y Carlos Salinas de Gortari en ese entonces) era que se crearían más trabajos en México y que el TLC llevaría a más prosperidad para ambos países. No fué así. Que con el TLC aumentó el flujo de indocumentados a Estados Unidos y cada vez usando formas más peligrosas.

3. Añade la nota que inclusive con una reforma migratoria, como la que se debate en el senado, el problema tendrá un efecto limitado, ya que el problema de raiz es la disparidad económica y la pobreza.


TRES comentarios TRES:

1. Todo esto que dice la nota de Reuters, es lo mismo que ha estado diciendo el peje en sus discursos: que cada vez hay más pobres; que el país se echó a perder desde el sexenio de Salinas, y que la política económica que se sigue con Fox--y que pretende continuar fecal--no ha solucionado nada. Que por el contrario, ha empeorado el asunto.

2. Si Fox dice que tomará "generaciones" que se acabe la disparidad económica, pero los números muestran que mientras más avanza el tiempo MENOS se soluciona el problema y, por el contrario, se hace cada vez más grande, ¿POR QUÉ CARAJOS INSISTE EN QUE HAY QUE SEGUIR POR ESTE CAMINO?

3. ¿Por qué tiene que esperar el país pacientemente GENERACIONES a que se acabe la pobreza que la derecha PRIANista creó en 3 sexenios? ¡NI MADRES! Si la derecha no pudo con el paquete, que se haga a un lado entonces.

Una razón más para votar por el peje y por el PRD para el congreso en el 2006.