Former Congressman and immigration hawk Tom Tancredo penned an op-ed that deals a massive dose of truth to the immigration debate, and it’s an argument that’s been in need of being heard for a long time.
Mexico’s corrupt government can’t handle the burden of its own insolvency.
So forcing the poorest of its citizens over the border serves as a release valve for economic pressure.
Here’s more from Breitbart…
The big news this week seems to be that the Mexican government is not happy with President Trump’s border control plans. That headline comes on the heels of the news that the sun is hot. Imagine that!
Mexico is not happy that President Trump appears to be serious about building a border wall and halting the cross-border human traffic. The improvements in border security promised in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 as a trade-off for the general amnesty never happened, and illegal border crossings have trended upwards again after a brief decline connected to the 2008-10 recession. Apprehensions of illegal border jumperson the southwest border have increased every year but one since 2010, and increased 23 percent from 2015 to 2016.
Because of the relative ease of crossing the border and Mexico’s liberal definition of Mexican citizenship, we have the situation recently described by author Ann Coulter, who discovered that persons of Mexican origin now residing in the United States — legal and illegal– are equal in number to over 25 percent of the 130 million population of Mexico.
The Pew Hispanic Center says there were 33.7 million Americans of Mexican descent in the United States in 2012, and that figure is based in part on the official Census figure of 11.3 million illegal aliens, over 60 percent of whom are from Mexico. If you believe as I do that the illegal alien population of the U.S. is over 25 million, not 11.3 million, then the percentage of Mexican nationals now residing in the U.S. — persons recognized as Mexican citizens under the Mexican Constitution — is considerably above 25 percent.
Few Americans are aware that in 2005, in recognition of the growing importance of remittances to the Mexican economy and thus the growing importance of maintaining a close connection with the millions of Mexicans who have moved north, the Mexican constitution was amended to bestow voting rights in presidential elections for Mexicans living abroad. In 2012, over eleven million Mexicans living in the United States voted in the Mexican presidential election.
Let me put this in stark economic terms: Mexico’s national income grows in direct proportion to the size of the illegal Mexican population inside the United States. Does that help explain the Mexican fixation on U.S. politics? Mexico’s most profitable export to the U.S. is not oil or avocados or automobile parts, it is people.
Mexicans living and working in the U.S. send home over $20 billion annually in cash remittances — more than Mexico earns in foreign currency from tourism or any export commodity.
In 1979, Mexico received only $177,000 (U.S. Dollars) in remittances; in 2016 it was $26.1 BILLION — over 90 percent of it from persons living in the United States. (See here for a GAO report on remittances to Mexico from the U.S. and here for the World Bank reports for total remittances received by Mexico.)
You don’t believe government data? Even the Clinton News Network confirms it: this recent CNN report says Mexico relies more on remittance income than the sale of oil or tourism.
To guarantee those remittance dollars keep flowing north to south, Mexico must keep exporting its citizens south to north. Does anyone think Mexico will give up that lucrative income graciously? Do you think Mexican politicians will welcome an interruption of either of those two flows — either people going north or dollars coming south?
