Mexican Immigration

This is the coastline about a quarter of a mile from our future retirement home on the northern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in a small fishing village called Chelem. The coastline runs east and west. Looking directly north toward the Gulf of Mexico, you're looking toward New Orleans. Looking over the white and yellow boat in the foreground, over the horizon is somewhere around Houston. Being a fan of sunrise and sunset over the ocean, I would rather the coastline face east or west but I don't complain about that too much.

Chelem only has about 3500 residents with around 300 being gringos, mostly Canadians with a growing number of Americans. It's a quiet place where things start slow in the morning and end pretty early. Breakfast in a restaurant here doesn't start until 9 or 10 in the morning and in the evenings most things shut down when the sun sets. There are no chain restaurants available, they are all family establishments. This makes for a 10 to 12 hour work day for the owners and they work seven days a week.

It's hard for the Mexicans to find work here, there just isn't that many jobs. Usually young Mexican men will have three to five different part time jobs. Some of them are seasonal, like fishing for a certain type of seafood. Some are more regular but not full time. It may be a construction job lasting a few weeks that only comes along every two months. The excess supply of people wanting to work keeps wages low. That intermittent construction job will probably pay on the order of 250-300 pesos (around $15 US) for an 8 to 10 hour work day. Similarly, I can have a lady come clean my house for 6 hours for 300 pesos.

Because of the lack of work, there are occasionally problems with petty theft. Far from being armed robbery, these are crimes of opportunity. Tourist for some reason will not use the same judgement they would at home. They may leave a purse on a street side table unattended or a laptop on a beachfront patio. All someone has to do is walk by and pick the item up hoping it has some value. The tourist then has a story to tell when they get home about the crime being horrible in Mexico. Mexico is not perfect by any means, but for crime and violence it gets a bad rap here in the States.

Mexico has thousands if not tens of thousands of these small villages spread throughout the country. Each with similar problems with jobs or the lack of jobs. If you have a job you're working 10 - 12 hours a day, 7 days a week in some cases. In the case of those that may have several jobs, but not enough, one of their jobs is to look for more work. Most of us at one point having been looking for a job and know that looking for a job doesn't pay that well.

It's easy to see why residents of Mexico want to move to the U.S. The appeal of higher wages, job availability, shorter working hours, and job consistency would be quiet an alluring thought. As a result, the Migration Information Source in the article Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States indicates that in 2016 26% of all immigrants into the United States were from Mexico. By far the largest of any other country.

Before you start thinking I am an extreme left wing, bleeding heart liberal wanting to open our borders, stop. That would be wrong. I realize that not everyone coming to the U.S. wants to come here and work to make a better life for their family. There are people with drug cartels, gangs like MS-13, terrorist, and those that want government handouts that want to get in as well. But stopping all immigration would be like the old saying of "throwing the baby out with the bath water".

Since Mexico is the source of the majority of our immigrants and Mexico has a very strong immigration policy, why don't we work with Mexico to model our immigration policy after theirs? Violation of immigration laws in Mexico means you go to jail to await your trial or you are immediately deported. Nice and simple, no being allowed to wander around freely while you await your trial.

Methods to obtain a temporary or permanent resident card in Mexico are well defined. The first category for obtaining a resident card is financial solvency. You have to prove you have the financial strength to support yourself and those that are immigrating with you. Even if you have family members that are Mexican citizens or permanent residents, although reduced, there are still requirements that you have financial solvency. The bottom line is that you have to show you have something to benefit Mexico, if nothing more that benefit is having money to spend rather than some criminal enterprise you want to join.

The Mexican constitution and Mexican labor laws clearly layout the status of the immigrant once in Mexico. Foreigners may not be involved in politics in any way. Many jobs are not available to those that are not native born Mexicans, including the military, police force, and government. The article Mexico: Surprising Jobs Off-Limits to Foreigners includes:

Federal Labor Law Article 7 – In every business or establishment, at least 90% of the workers must be Mexican. If there are no Mexicans available with the specialized training, the business can temporarily hire foreign workers; however, the business and the foreign workers have an obligation to train Mexicans in the specialty. This section does not apply to directors, administrators or general managers.

Federal Labor Law Article 154 – Employers are obligated to prefer, in equal circumstances, Mexican workers over foreigners.

My thought is that if we implement immigration policies and labor laws like those in Mexico, most of our illegal immigration issues would go away. Mexico is the largest source of people immigrating into the United States. Mexico also has very strong immigration and labor laws concerning foreigners living in Mexico. Surely Mexico would be willing to work with the U.S. government to make our immigration and labor laws equal to theirs.