A new report by InSight Crime finds links links between restrictive U.S. border policies and the growth of a multi-billion-dollar smuggling economy in Mexico.
Having worked on the Mexican border for over a decade, can confirm every time America does something to push Mexico, Mexico pushes back in obvious & subtle ways. It is also an axiom of International Relations that the more a country tries to control an honor-based culture, the more it triggers & empowers that culture’s artists, politicians & criminals to speak out, fight back or use the situation.
Anyone old enough, raised in a border state, & not blinded by racism or xenophobia, remembers the situation before Clinton's bipartisan IIRAIRA, when laid-off or injured workers would return to Mexico, then come back when they could work again. Coyotes were $50, cartels we're absent, & many didn't need a coyote to cross. We've given the xenophobes everything they asked. They move the goalposts every time.
Curious if you have seen any evidence of cartels financially supporting candidates that support deterrence policies, so they can justify increased fees to migrants .
Smuggling US guns to Mexico also pushes migrants here, but there is no talk from MAGA about limiting US gun sales to straw buyers for smuggling to the cartels
Thank you so much for this so important and so well done article! I'm from Portugal and I live in Italy, and just today I had a discussion about this topic. In Portugal it seems that smuggling is used as a reason to "control" migrants that want to enter the country, the discourse is something like "we cannot have smugglers acting in our country, so we have to find urgent measures to control or reduce the people that come in". Your text helps to clarify things and think from different perspectives, thank you again.
So quotas for H2 Visas should go much higher for all Central American countries and Mexico? This way all the would be undocumented migrants would have spent their $10,000 to $13,000 on an immigration lawyer instead of a smuggler and USCIS would grant those visas, right?
Yeah, 50,000 per year more H2 Visas, for Mexico, and say 30,000 a year more for Guatemala, 23,000 for Hondurans, etc.
• Those that don’t apply for visas surely should qualify for asylum, as asylum rules and standards should be much more lax. Again , the U.S should adjust. If no H2 or Asylum we should provide other relief for whoever is left without legal status.
• Then ideally, remove the barrier set forth by the 2006 Secure Fence Act and lower the amount of patrol. For example, only four USBP Agents per shift at larger stations like Nogales, Yuma, El Paso.
On a busy night , maybe more agents, but no too many. Smaller stations would need only two or three agents per shift?
That will solve this! The US can just offer more visas and less border security.
• Even if we perform all these idealistic efforts, the human smugglers and traffickers will still be working those ladders, ropes, trails and Smuggling Fees.
•We must hold other countries accountable to provide public safety and a living wage for their citizens which can literally lower the push factor.
Department of State has to do more diplomatically.
Terrific column. People I know engaged in humanitarian work with migrants in SW AZ consider the border wall a multibillion $ subsidy for the cartels because it increased the difficulty of crossing and allowed them to raise their prices.
It's also important to mention that smugglers are marketers who use US political dynamics (e.g., Biden's election) to sell would-be migrants on their prospects for making it across safely and establishing themselves (either unauthorized with false docs, or authorized through some future amnesty). As MPI's Andrew Selee wrote in Politico after the 2020 election: "There was a perception that with Biden, the border would be more open. And then the reality was that some people actually did get in. The perception of the change, coupled with just enough reality of change, allowed the smugglers to sell this."
Selee reports that when he worked in Tijuana he knew smugglers, even had coffee and talked to them. "They are smart, smooth marketers. But as good as they are at selling their wares, they can’t sell what doesn’t exist. When there’s a real change on the ground, they’ll exaggerate that; they can exaggerate how easy it is to get in. But if nobody is getting in, they can’t completely make it up. The reality of change mattered as much as the perception of it."
Jim, thanks so much for the comment. You’re absolutely right about the marketing that cartels engage with as it relates to US policy. And thanks for the references to other work on that topic, I’ll definitely include that in future posts.
Having worked on the Mexican border for over a decade, can confirm every time America does something to push Mexico, Mexico pushes back in obvious & subtle ways. It is also an axiom of International Relations that the more a country tries to control an honor-based culture, the more it triggers & empowers that culture’s artists, politicians & criminals to speak out, fight back or use the situation.
Anyone old enough, raised in a border state, & not blinded by racism or xenophobia, remembers the situation before Clinton's bipartisan IIRAIRA, when laid-off or injured workers would return to Mexico, then come back when they could work again. Coyotes were $50, cartels we're absent, & many didn't need a coyote to cross. We've given the xenophobes everything they asked. They move the goalposts every time.
Wow, $50. I can’t imagine! Valuable historical perspective, David, thank you.
Curious if you have seen any evidence of cartels financially supporting candidates that support deterrence policies, so they can justify increased fees to migrants .
Smuggling US guns to Mexico also pushes migrants here, but there is no talk from MAGA about limiting US gun sales to straw buyers for smuggling to the cartels
I haven’t seen any of evidence of that, no. Thanks for the comment.
Thank you so much for this so important and so well done article! I'm from Portugal and I live in Italy, and just today I had a discussion about this topic. In Portugal it seems that smuggling is used as a reason to "control" migrants that want to enter the country, the discourse is something like "we cannot have smugglers acting in our country, so we have to find urgent measures to control or reduce the people that come in". Your text helps to clarify things and think from different perspectives, thank you again.
Absolutely! Thanks for the comment.
So quotas for H2 Visas should go much higher for all Central American countries and Mexico? This way all the would be undocumented migrants would have spent their $10,000 to $13,000 on an immigration lawyer instead of a smuggler and USCIS would grant those visas, right?
Yeah, 50,000 per year more H2 Visas, for Mexico, and say 30,000 a year more for Guatemala, 23,000 for Hondurans, etc.
• Those that don’t apply for visas surely should qualify for asylum, as asylum rules and standards should be much more lax. Again , the U.S should adjust. If no H2 or Asylum we should provide other relief for whoever is left without legal status.
• Then ideally, remove the barrier set forth by the 2006 Secure Fence Act and lower the amount of patrol. For example, only four USBP Agents per shift at larger stations like Nogales, Yuma, El Paso.
On a busy night , maybe more agents, but no too many. Smaller stations would need only two or three agents per shift?
That will solve this! The US can just offer more visas and less border security.
• Even if we perform all these idealistic efforts, the human smugglers and traffickers will still be working those ladders, ropes, trails and Smuggling Fees.
•We must hold other countries accountable to provide public safety and a living wage for their citizens which can literally lower the push factor.
Department of State has to do more diplomatically.
Terrific column. People I know engaged in humanitarian work with migrants in SW AZ consider the border wall a multibillion $ subsidy for the cartels because it increased the difficulty of crossing and allowed them to raise their prices.
It's also important to mention that smugglers are marketers who use US political dynamics (e.g., Biden's election) to sell would-be migrants on their prospects for making it across safely and establishing themselves (either unauthorized with false docs, or authorized through some future amnesty). As MPI's Andrew Selee wrote in Politico after the 2020 election: "There was a perception that with Biden, the border would be more open. And then the reality was that some people actually did get in. The perception of the change, coupled with just enough reality of change, allowed the smugglers to sell this."
Selee reports that when he worked in Tijuana he knew smugglers, even had coffee and talked to them. "They are smart, smooth marketers. But as good as they are at selling their wares, they can’t sell what doesn’t exist. When there’s a real change on the ground, they’ll exaggerate that; they can exaggerate how easy it is to get in. But if nobody is getting in, they can’t completely make it up. The reality of change mattered as much as the perception of it."
Jim, thanks so much for the comment. You’re absolutely right about the marketing that cartels engage with as it relates to US policy. And thanks for the references to other work on that topic, I’ll definitely include that in future posts.