Solving the Immigration Problem Means Addressing the Realities of Corporate Globalization

By Douglas Massey, Boston Review. Posted May 28, 2009.

In the context of ongoing economic integration within North America and continued labor demand from the United States, this militarization of the border did not reduce the number of undocumented entries from Mexico. What it did do was dramatically lower the number of undocumented exits.

Militarizing the border increased the costs and risks of undocumented border crossing, and migrants quite logically adapted to this new reality by minimizing border crossing. But not by deciding to remain in Mexico. Instead, they hunkered down in the United States once they had run the gauntlet at the border.

In response to tightened border enforcement, undocumented emigration from the United States was halved. By making no provision for the movement of workers within North America and by militarizing the border with our second-largest trading partner, U.S. policy did not merely fail -- it backfired, actually doubling the net inflow of undocumented migrants to produce today's population of eleven million.

Although legalizing undocumented migrants may be a moral imperative, an amnesty will not by itself solve the underlying problem of undocumented migration. Mexico is a trillion-dollar economy with 110 million people, and it is a friendly nation with which we are increasingly integrated socially and economically. Yet in terms of immigration policy, we treat Mexico like any other nation, allocating to it the same number of visas as to Botswana or Nepal. In the absence of legal means to accommodate the legitimate demands for work and residence visas, the flow has been diverted to unauthorized channels.

If undocumented migration is to be solved in the long term, we must address the realities of North American economic integration by providing for the legal movement of workers between Mexico and the United States. Increasing the number of permanent-residence visas and once again making temporary labor visas accessible to Mexican workers is the greater part of that effort.

This policy makes practical as well as moral sense, given that many jobs in the United States are seasonal in nature or do not provide earnings sufficient to support U.S.-based workers in a competitive global economy. Moreover, contrary to what most Americans think, the vast majority of Mexicans do not begin migrating with the intention of settling permanently in the United States. Instead they come to work temporarily in order to accumulate savings or generate remittances to solve an economic problem at home. If they had their druthers, most would return home after one or two periods of short-term U.S. labor. Militarizing the border with Mexico only frustrates the natural desire of migrants to circulate rather than settle, driving up the costs of immigration to the citizens of both countries.

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Douglas S. Massey is Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and coauthor of American Apartheid and Miracles on the Border.

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