The Remedy Is Mexican Jobs

In Mexico City this past week, I stood on a dais with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and offered the opinion that he had played a role in the series of events leading to the mediated resolution to the Proposition 187 litigation announced at the end of July. This proved to be the equivalent of waving a red flag at a bull.

In this case, the bull was the popular political movement that fobbed off Proposition 187’s wrong-headed “remedies” for illegal immigration on the voters of California in 1994. But those who attacked me for crediting Zedillo’s influence overlooked the fact that I was in Mexico promoting the ultimate remedy for illegal immigration and the economically fueled reaction to it in California: improved business relations leading to improved economies in both places. And I think we made some progress.

Our bipartisan delegation was the latest in a series of efforts undertaken since the beginning of 1999 to reconnect with our southern neighbor and to address several years of bad feeling over immigration issues with constructive solutions. Building on Gov. Gray Davis’ visit to Mexico soon after his inauguration and President Zedillo’s historic visit north in May, our group of government, business, labor and educational leaders sought to widen mutual cooperation.

By concentrating on positive opportunities, we worked to deliver concrete benefits for California’s key industries. Meeting with Mexican transportation officials, we stressed the importance of the Boeing Corp.’s bid to sell $6.5 billion worth of commercial aircraft to Mexican airlines. The sale would support thousands of high-paying jobs based in Long Beach for aerospace engineers and production-line workers hit hard by defense cutbacks earlier in the decade. It also would help modernize Mexico’s airlines and have a positive impact on the country’s economy.

Significantly, we persuaded Mexican Energy Secretary Luis Tellez to reconsider the technical criteria for the purchase of coal for Mexican power plants. This would level the playing field for Los Angeles to bid on the shipment of coal to Mexico’s west coast. Without redrafting the criteria, the port of Los Angeles’ $250-million state-of-the-art facility would be out of the running.

The delegation also was able to pave the way for a $55-million contract for a U.S. firm to provide advanced X-ray equipment for detecting drugs and contraband cargo in trucks crossing the border.

A high point of the trip was our visit to Jalisco, a region closely linked with California through new high-tech partnerships as well as historically strong migration flows. The sprawling Guadalajara facility of Hewlett-Packard provides a strong contrast to the low-wage border maquiladora factories. It places a California high-tech firm in the forefront of global competitiveness and employs thousands of well-paid workers in Mexico.

An hour’s drive into the countryside, we visited a different type of bustling community that also is closely linked with California. Californians of Mexican origin send substantial amounts of money to their relatives in Mexico. How the funds are used is changing. In the small village of Extalan, we got a firsthand look at a community development effort that is creating clothing and furniture manufacturing jobs. These businesses are funded, in part, by immigrant remittances and also by the government of Jalisco. Jointly supported by UCLA’s North American Integration and Development Center and the University of Guadalajara, this pioneering project created 15,000 jobs in its first three years. It is not a panacea: Jalisco needs to create 55,000 jobs a year. But it’s a start.

It is in California’s interest to help these kinds of ideas succeed because the more traditional approaches to stemming illegal immigration--border control and tough immigration laws--clearly have not worked. That is because they do not address the reason most immigrants risk their lives to travel northward: jobs and quality of life. In contrast, improving the Mexican economy focuses on precisely those factors.

Based on the overreaction to my comments regarding Zedillo and any influence he had in the governor’s final decision on the fate of Proposition 187, there is clearly still a great deal of tension surrounding the matter of immigration.

While we can’t simply close our eyes to this issue, we can narrow our focus on the areas in which we can make a positive difference. Despite all the distractions, that was the real news from Mexico this week: Mexico is striving to keep its people at home and put them to work in good jobs and California is improving its own economy by helping Mexico to do so. That, not withholding health care and throwing kids out of school, makes for effective immigration policy.