Laws: April, 2003 - Number #5

Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda resigned in January 2003 and was replaced by Economy Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez. Castaneda, the most pro-American Mexican foreign minister in recent history, said he was frustrated by his inability "to achieve faster and more concrete results in implementing new ideas about migration" with the US. He said that US "immigration policies have failed to stem illegal immigration from Mexico and, in exchange, have fostered a dangerous and sometimes lethal black market for human beings."

In November 2002, President Bush, in response to a call by President Fox for " a framework to regulate and ensure orderly migration between the two countries," said, "Our cabinet officials continue to work together on creative new policies so that migration is legal, orderly and safe." The lack of a migration agreement is expected to weaken Fox's National Action Party (PAN) in legislative elections scheduled for July 6, 2003.

In January 2003, US and Mexican Catholic bishops issued a 50-page statement, "Strangers No Longer: Together on a Journey of Hope," that called on the US to legalize the status of Mexicans in the US. The bishops' plan calls for legalization for unauthorized foreigners with "long-term ties" to the US and a new temporary-worker program that offers a route to immigrant status, so-called earned legalization. The bishops also urged "humane" border enforcement policies in both countries.

Mexico's 47 US consulates have been issuing "matricula" consular cards to Mexicans in the US so that they have a government-issued ID card to present to US banks, police and other officials as identification. The fee for the card is $29. Matriculas have been issued to Mexicans abroad since 1871, but in significant numbers only since September 11, 2001, when government-issued ID cards were required for many activities in the US. Over the last few years, the number of cards issued to Mexicans in the US has jumped. Representative Thomas G. Tancredo (R-CO) announced plans to introduce legislation that would prevent federal agencies from accepting matriculas as IDs.

Beginning March 20, 1998, Mexicans who had become naturalized citizens of other countries could reclaim Mexican nationality it if they applied by March 20, 2003; about 30,000 did so in the past three years. Dual citizenship has tangible benefits: the ability to own property anywhere in Mexico, and legal status to live and work there with rights equal to those of any other citizen, except the right to vote or hold political office.

The 2000 US Census found 7.8 million people born in Mexico, including 1.6 million who had become American citizens. In total, 21.7 million people in the US were born in Mexico or of Mexican heritage, they were two-thirds of the 32.8 million US Hispanic residents.

The US-Mexico Congressional Caucus in March 2004 announced that it would focus on easing trade barriers between Mexico and the US, and delay consideration of immigration. Since Nafta went into effect on January 1, 1994, two-way trade between Mexico and the US tripled to almost $250 billion a year; Canada-US trade totals about $350 billion a year. Mexico opened trade centers around the US in 2001-02 to promote trade. However, too few of Mexico's 31 states and the federal district had the money to send business delegations to link up with US businesses, and some of the trade centers are consequently closing.

Border. Many maquiladora workers in border cities arrive with no money, only contacts with family or friends who can find them jobs and provide temporary accommodations. During most of the year, the border area receives little rain, and many newly arrived migrants build shanties on public land in flood-prone areas. They may be killed by mudslides caused by winter rains. Tijuana officials periodically inspect the high-risk neighborhoods and post red stickers on the homes that are most likely to collapse or be swept away in the floods. In 1993 and 1998, storms battered Tijuana, flooding canyons and destroying squatters' settlements.

Since 1982, Mexican trucks have been limited to operating within a 20-mile commercial border zone inside the US. The North American Free Trade Agreement required the US and Mexico to allow commercial vehicles to operate freely, but US unions blocked the implementation of this provision, citing safety concerns. President Bush ordered the U.S. Department of Transportation to accept applications from Mexican truckers to operate in the US in 2002, but the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in January 2003 ruled that, before Mexican trucks are allowed into the US, the federal government must complete a comprehensive environmental impact review. The court's ruling addressed a key issue raised by Nafta critics: can US environmental laws be overridden in the name of spurring trade? The judges said that US Nafta compliance "cannot come at the cost of violating United States [environmental] law."

Rural Development. A hallmark of the Fox administration is linking Mexican business and migrant communities abroad, with the objective of creating jobs so that Mexicans do not have to emigrate. Mexican federal, state, and local programs that match remittances used to improve infrastructure or establish businesses that create jobs are examples of how the Fox administration is working with "migrant heroes" abroad to use their remittances to promote economic development in Mexico.

UCLA Professor Raul Hinojosa warns that matching alone does not assure stay-at-home development: without real job creation, he warned, "a lot of these social infrastructure initiatives end up subsidizing future migration -- making better migrants -- and the resources stay on the US side."

Compartamos (Let's Share), Finca (Farm) and 32 other microcredit or microfinance lenders make 95 percent of their small loans, often $100 to $500, to women in rural Mexico. Their default rate on these loans averages two percent. Many of the lenders are based on the model of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, which lends $1.2 billion to 2.4 million poor people, overwhelmingly women.

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake rocked Colima, a Mexican state on the Pacific Ocean, in January 2003, killed at least 29 people and left hundreds homeless. Some unauthorized migrants from Colima returned to bury relatives, and asked the Mexican government to request the US government to allow them to return to the US.

Economy. Mexico's economy shrank 0.3 percent in 2001, grew 1.1 percent in 2002, and is expected to grow three percent in 2003. IMSS expects the number of registered workers to increase by 268,000 in 2002 and 524,000 in 2003; the labor force grows by about a million a year. The Mexican government collects 11 percent of GDP in taxes, compared to 20 percent in the US.

The Mexican peso fell from about 9 pesos to US$1 in 2002 to 11 to US$1 in 2003; in 1994, the rate was about 3 pesos to US$1. Mexico has three minimum wages: 43.65 pesos per day in the A-zone, or Mexico City; 41.81 pesos per day in the B-Zone; which includes Monterrey and Guadalajara, and 40.30 pesos per day in the C-zone elsewhere. Of the 32 million employed Mexicans, about seven million receive the minimum wage or less, another 10 million earn between one and two minimum wages per day, 11 million Mexicans earn between 120 and 200 pesos a day, and four million earn more than 200 pesos a day.

Western Union provided 42 percent of the revenue of First Data, in part because it handled 83 percent of the international money transfers originating in the US in 2002. Its chief rival is Viad's Moneygram, which reached an agreement to market money transfer services via 2,800 Wal-Mart stores in the US and 400 in Mexico. Western Union has about 151,000 agents worldwide.

Mexico received about 19 million foreign visitors in 2002, down from 20-21 million in 2001-02. The decline has hurt the tourism industry, which employs two million Mexican workers.

In October 1992, President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari met at San Antonio's German-American School to initial the 2,000-page North American Free Trade Agreement that had been negotiated, but not yet approved by legislative bodies in the three countries. After Bush lost his re-election bid, President Bill Clinton guided it through Congress over the opposition of US unions. In the decade since 1992, Mexican exports to the US rose from $45 billion to $113 billion. There have been many changes in Mexico; Wal-Mart is now Mexico's biggest grocer.

Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil company created in 1938 and today the world's fifth-largest oil company, is a $46 billion-a-year operation rife with corruption. However, Pemex paid $29 billion in taxes to the federal government in 2001, about 40 percent of government revenue, which makes many Mexican leaders reluctant to attempt reforms. The union that represents 90,000 of the 139,000 Pemex employees has long been considered corrupt.

Mexico needs more electricity, but the Mexican constitution limits private as well as foreign ownership of energy resources. There is little chance that President Fox can secure the necessary two-thirds majority in Congress to allow private and foreign investment in electricity generation before the July 2003 legislative elections. Private firms provide about a fifth of Mexico's electricity. Since 1992, they have been allowed to build plants that sell all their power to the state monopoly, the Federal Electricity Commission, under 25-year contracts, or supply power directly to large industrial users.

Mexico has the world's highest per capita consumption of Coke, resulting from the lack of safe drinking water and Coca Cola's efficient distribution system that provides refrigerators to vendors, even in remote villages. Mexico is the second-largest market for bottled water, and many soft-drink companies sell bottled water. President Fox is a former Coca Cola executive.

Mexico City's 53-year old English-language paper, the News, stopped publishing at the end of 2002, reflecting both the internet availability of news and what some say is the trend toward multinational businesses hiring local managers to run overseas operations rather than posting expatriates abroad.

Michelle Mittelstadt and Alfredo Corchado, "Mexican ID opens doors for undocumented workers in U.S.," Dallas Morning News, February 18, 2003. Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, "U.S., Mexican Bishops Urge Bush to Resume Migration Negotiations," Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2003.