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.
Jul 2, 2023·edited Jul 2, 2023Liked by Austin Kocher
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.
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."
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.
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."