Winter, 2018—Beating At The Border: The Impact Of NAFTA And Immigration On U.S.-Mexico Relations

When Donald J. Trump first announced his candidacy for the United States presidency on June 16th, 2015, the newest Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency expressed several complaints against the United States’ neighbor south of the Rio Grande. “When do we beat Mexico at the border?” asked Trump. “They're laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me…they're killing us economically.” Trump went on to complain that the United States had become the “dumping ground” for the world’s problems; for Trump, that was especially true in terms of Mexican immigration into the United States. “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're sending people that have lots of problems…They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Throughout the 2016 presidential election campaign and after becoming the 45th chief executive of the United States, President Trump maintained his accusatory rhetoric against Mexico, portraying the United States as a victim in a destructive relationship with its neighbor to the south. What historical developments in U.S.-Mexico relations led to President Trump’s claims?  The answers can be discovered by understanding U.S. participation in the North American Free Trade Agreement and the problems of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. Put simply, President Trump’s claims were predicated upon the perceived economic inequities of NAFTA, the threat of illegal immigration, and fears concerning crime and terrorism. These historical issues have directly influenced President Trump’s proposal for a border wall and have highlighted the importance of maintaining strong relationships between neighboring geopolitical states.

On December 17th, 1992, U.S. President George H. W. Bush added his signature to the North American Free Trade Agreement, a trilateral agreement establishing a trade bloc intended to eliminate barriers to commerce and investment between the three signatory countries of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Supporters of NAFTA argued that the free trade deal would lead to job growth and increased economic development for the entire North American community of nations. Almost a year later, U.S. President Bill Clinton remarked that “NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement.” Clinton went on to warn against the fear-mongering of NAFTA’s opponents, explaining that “ours is now an era in which commerce is global…when you live in a time of change the only way to recover your security and to broaden your horizons is to adapt to the change, to embrace, to move forward.”

Although NAFTA’s supporters clearly viewed the trade deal as the way of the future and continue to do so today, this has not prevented many high-profile politicians and public figures from criticizing and condemning U.S. participation in the treaty.  As recently as September of 2016, businessman and soon-to-be President-elect Donald Trump referred to NAFTA as “the single worst trade deal ever approved” in American history.  Considering that NAFTA was conceived a quarter of a century before this particular denunciation by Trump, it is clear that NAFTA’s ever-persistent critics have had many years to formulate arguments against continued participation in a trade treaty allegedly hurtful to the United States, its citizens, and its interests.

According to proponents of the trade deal, the benefits of economic development derived from NAFTA were, at least theoretically, supposed to have been enjoyed evenly by all three signatory countries as well as by every segment and sector of their socio-economic structures.  This rosy prediction did not prevent critics from expressing concerns that NAFTA instead led to job losses and wage stagnation for companies and workers in the United States. Over the past two decades, opponents of NAFTA have expressed anger with U.S. companies that move their operations—and the hundreds of thousands of jobs those operations provide—south of the border. On top of this wave of job loss, NAFTA has also been blamed for the U.S.-Mexico trade balance swing from a $1.7 billion U.S. surplus to a $54 billion deficit between the years 1993 and 2014.

Regardless of whether or not NAFTA is truly to blame, and regardless of the possibility that frustrating economic trends in the United States may be due to other factors, job losses and trade deficits have given politicians like President Trump plenty of rhetorical ammunition with which to launch unbridled attacks against continued U.S. participation in a deal that has purportedly left U.S. citizens worse off than they otherwise would have been. The Donald Trump campaign promised to use the federal government to guarantee the jobs and wages of the American people, and that message’s appeal was made apparent at the polls when Trump won the 2016 presidential election. Tump’s successful bid for president had many stunning and remarkable implications for U.S. politics, but it especially proved that arguments against NAFTA continue to maintain currency in the contemporary public dialogue.

Opponents of NAFTA criticize the treaty for many reasons that relate back to job losses and trade deficits in the United States, but another important motivation for criticism of NAFTA is immigration, an issue with significant links to all of the topics mentioned thus far in this blog post. Economic integration and NAFTA’s streamlining of trade between the United States and Mexico resulted in a significant “restructuring” of the two countries’ labor forces, introducing a “new migratory dynamic.”  In the years since NAFTA’s introduction, this new dynamic prompted millions of Mexicans to cross into the United States and settle there on a permanent basis. This surge in immigration was driven by a need for work and better wages; evidently, U.S. companies had not moved south fast enough to satisfy the needs of these job seekers. Over the past 25 years, immigrants from Mexico and other Central American nations have established a major presence in the agricultural, service, food processing, and manufacturing sectors of the U.S. economy.  In this way, Latinos became an even more permanent and visible fixture in the U.S. labor market.

Increased Latino immigration into the United States via the Mexican border was also accompanied by an increased Latin American cultural impact that provoked tension within a mostly racially white, culturally Protestant U.S. society.  These tensions have manifested in various ways but have been especially prevalent with regards to the issue of U.S. state governments and their practice of subsidizing educational, medical, and welfare services for undocumented and illegal Latino immigrants.

Since 1986, when new legislation in the United States initiated a nominal crackdown on illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border, the Latino population residing within the United States continued to skyrocket; this was due, in large part, to the practice of Latino workers choosing to make the U.S. their new permanent home for the sake of convenience and ease of access to better-paying jobs.  Prior to this, many Latino immigrants had engaged in cyclical migration patterns that allowed them to live in the United States for part of the year and in Mexico for the rest of the annual calendar. However, after the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, increasing numbers of Latinos felt compelled to live permanently inside the United States. To accomplish this, many chose to illegally immigrate by covertly crossing the border or by overstaying beyond their work visa limitations.

The upsurge in illegal immigration during the past 25 years helps to explain why political stances similar to President Trump’s have become more popular in recent times. Many Americans hold the traditional viewpoint that immigration is a privilege and not a right, that illegal immigration represents a serious breach of law and order. Furthermore, many Americans who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election worry that illegal immigration—and the efforts of big businesses, major political parties, and government bureaucracies to subsidize public services for illegal immigrants and to protect them from federal law enforcement agencies—constitutes a serious threat to the concept of civic virtue, leaving the value of citizenship cheapened and demeaned. It is fundamentally impossible to understand the rise of Donald Trump and the heated anti-Mexican rhetoric which came to dominate U.S. presidential politics without understanding this perceived threat of illegal immigration.

Millions of U.S. voters who find President Trump’s anti-Mexican rhetoric to be appealing have pointed to a wide array of evidence that suggests a strong link between illegal immigration and increasing crime rates and terroristic activities along the U.S.-Mexican border. Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants have reported that their illicit border crossings were facilitated by human traffickers who eventually sold them into slavery inside the United States.  Human traffickers often engage in other criminal activities; reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning the kidnappings-for-ransom, drug trafficking operations, and weapons stockpiling of drug cartels along the border have gripped the headlines in the past few years.

Illegal immigration has been accompanied by a general rise in crime along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the crime wave itself has resulted in an escalation of terroristic violence that is a growing concern for many U.S. citizens. In August of 2014, Mexican drug cartels increased their violent presence in the border regions. James Phelps, an assistant professor specializing in security and criminal justice at Angelo State University in Texas, explained that cartels are turning to the use of deadlier weapons, like hand grenades, to ensure that their control over the illegal immigrant and drug trades go unchallenged. Phelps went on to explain that “with Border Patrol so heavily distracted doing paperwork and watching the mass flood of people coming into the country, they don’t have as much time to do what they used to do—drug interdiction.”

The rising tide of crime and terrorism on the southern border has only emphasized President Trump’s continued calls for a border wall to be built along the U.S.-Mexico border.  How will a wall protect the United States from terrorism? Considering the projected and provocative costs for such a plan, the resultant deterrence for crime and terrorism appears to be minimal as long as existing immigration legislation is not properly enforced. Indeed, if current immigration laws were to be fully enforced, President Trump’s calls for an additional border wall would be largely unnecessary.

If President Trump truly wishes to effectively combat crime and terrorism on the U.S.-Mexico border, the most important step he could take would be to order federal agencies to proactively enforce current immigration laws. For example, small reforms could be made to the existing visa system, which currently makes it rather easy for immigrant workers to ignore overstay limitations.  U.S. laws already contain provisions for effective management of immigration policy; proper enforcement of these provisions would make it far easier for agencies tasked with border patrol to stop the most dangerous individuals from entering United States territory. Thus far, it has been pleasing to see plenty of evidence that President Trump is more than willing to oversee federal enforcement of existing immigration laws, to toughen border security, and to work hard to effectively limit illegal immigration in ways that lead to substantive and positive results. To be cautious, however, in integrating a clear vision of border security within a wider framework of national security, President Trump should avoid overblown rhetoric about a border wall that would be cost prohibitive and largely ineffective on its own. The same holds true for all of Trump’s rhetoric concerning the U.S.-Mexico relationship; instead of the rancor of showmanship politics, the U.S.-Mexico relationship needs to be based upon commonsense policies, mutual respect, and adherence to the rule of law.

Understanding the ongoing debates concerning the United States’ relationship with Mexico is impossible without first understanding the history of U.S. participation and alleged victimization in NAFTA and illegal immigration’s relationship with crime and terrorism on the U.S.-Mexico border. Public discussions about U.S.-Mexico relations have become heated and intense, and much of the impassioned oratory on the subject has come straight from the White House. The Donald Trump victory in the 2016 presidential election indicates that many U.S. citizens hope to protect their economic interests and the rule of law in their country by painting Mexico as an avowed enemy of the United States seeking to destroy its neighbor to the north.

It is incredibly important for neighboring states to maintain strong relationships with one another. As the United States of America and Mexico work out the problems between them, it is crucial to remember that commonsense policies must be combined with mutual respect for people of different nationalities and backgrounds. At the same time, laws must be obeyed and enforced. Through it all, politicians and government agents on both sides of the border should make it a priority to avoid mistreatment or discrimination based upon race, culture, or religion. Most importantly of all, the public dialogue about these issues needs to remain balanced and civil, with compassion for individuals and for families as the cornerstone of public policy.

When candidate Trump accused Mexico of not being a friend of the United States in that first campaign rally on June 16th, 2015, he was, in many ways, riding a wave of history and taking advantage of the pent-up feelings of anger and frustration of millions of U.S. citizens. As President of the United States, Donald Trump will need to balance these historical passions with the imperative to improve his country’s relationship with Mexico. It is to be earnestly hoped that President Trump will not make that relationship worse.

--Christopher Peterson, February 26th, 2018