America's border troubles, north and south

Aug 25th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

A furore is growing over borders in North America. Can the United States guard the homeland, protect trade with Canada and Mexico and not antagonise its two crucial neighbours at the same time?

ASK an American journalist or politician about foreign policy, and he will probably talk about Iraq, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, or perhaps development and trade. But a recent survey by Foreign Affairs magazine and Public Agenda, a non-governmental organisation, found that the average American thinks there is more to it than that. For Joe Sixpack, two of the top foreign-policy issues are protecting American jobs and fighting illegal immigration, something he takes far more seriously than the elites that claim to represent him.

And these two issues come together with extra urgency on America’s two long borders, with Canada and Mexico. The summer has been a hot one, politically as well as out in the sun. Earlier this year, groups of self-styled American “Minutemen” announced their intention to police the Mexican border in areas where America’s official border patrol was unwilling or unable to do so.
To many, the initiative smacked of dangerous vigilantism. But a wave of drug-related crime crossing into America has made many others support the Minutemen. The American ambassador in Mexico recently closed the consulate in the border city of Nuevo Laredo in protest against the crime surge, and two state governors in America’s south-west, Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Janet Napolitano of Arizona, have declared states of emergency.
This led Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, to announce new border measures this week, saying Americans are “rightly distressed”.

But the Americans are not the only ones who are concerned. Ask any Mexican politician what his country’s foreign-policy priority must be, and the response is the same: maintain good relations with the United States and improve the lot of migrants headed north. Mexicans are annoyed that Americans mix up the questions of drug-related violence and economically motivated migration. With the former, it is American demand for drugs that encourages Mexican criminals to supply them, bringing crime and associated ills. This is just as much a problem, if not more, in Mexico itself. But America’s insistence on prohibition, and the heavy penalties it imposes even on possessors and smokers of cannabis, mean that the problem is unlikely to dwindle soon.

The other issue is economic migration. Though Americans see Mexican migrants as a threat to American jobs, the common response is that they do tasks—domestic housework, picking fruit and the like—that Americans are unwilling to do. Indeed, many industries rely on this cheap labour. And Mexicans are ever willing to supply it. A poll by the Pew Hispanic Centre found that 46% of Mexicans would move to the United States given the chance. Some 124,000 illegal immigrants have been caught in the Yuma sector of the Arizona border alone since last October, a 46% increase on the same period a year before. Americans are at least right to see the border-control system as out of control.

Mr Chertoff’s plans go beyond beefing up physical security such as guards, cameras and sensors. He also wants to increase the number of detention beds and immigration judges nearby. This will make it easier and quicker to question and return illegal immigrants who, under the current system, often slip away if there is nowhere to keep them during their processing.

The presidents of both countries agree on a partial solution. George Bush and Vicente Fox would like to regularise the papers of many of those illegals already working in the United States. But a potent nativist strain in Mr Bush’s Republican Party has kept this idea from making any progress. Mr Chertoff’s wall-builders, guards and judges will be left trying to stick their fingers in the dyke’s many holes. The only real solution is more economic development in Mexico, but that is a long-term prospect.

Blame America

America’s relationship with its northern neighbour has been thornier of late as well—though here the problem, as many see it, is the opposite of that down south: too few Canadians and Americans crossing the border. In the past, when the Canadian dollar surged—as it has again recently—Canadians crossed the border in huge numbers looking for cheap and varied goods, from groceries to cars. Such a flood has failed to materialise during the current rise of the “loonie”, as Canadians call their dollar. And even more Americans have failed to visit Canada than the loonie’s strength would normally have caused them to do in the past.

Some of the lack of cross-border enthusiasm has non-political causes, such as more cheap American retailers setting up in Canada. American plans to require its citizens to show a passport or other approved document when going to Canada or Mexico, currently being phased in, will only turn more people off travelling. But other issues on which Americans and Canadians tend to disagree—gay marriage, cannabis, Iraq—also play a role. Americans cite Canadian anti-Americanism as a reason why they do not head north more. Greg Hermus of the Canadian Tourism Research Institute, an industry body, has studied the issue from both sides and says Canadians have similar fears about American attitudes. “Both sides feel less welcome in the other country.”

In an age of global terrorism, America is surely right to be more defensive of its borders. But its neighbours see its policies on foreign affairs, drugs and immigration as arrogant or needlessly antagonistic. Though commerce has boomed since America, Canada and Mexico signed the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, America’s relationship with China shows that trade does not equal friendship. Changing attitudes—in all three countries—are in danger of becoming permanent.

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