Sometimes I read The Wall Street Journal and just laugh…it’s kind of a derisive, you have to be fucking kidding laugh. Many of the reporters do a great job but when you get to the ideologues who write opinion pieces, oh, lordy…to wit: today, Josh Kurtzman has a piece which looks at Mexico’s "job creation problem."
Why do so many Mexicans leave their families, friends and homes to make the arduous journey to the United States?
It’s a central question to the immigration debate and is essential for setting workable policies. But it’s also a question that has rarely been asked.
After looking at the numbers, what I discovered is that Mexico has a job-creation problem. During President Vicente Fox’s six years in office his goal was to create six million jobs across all sectors of the economy. Mr. Fox fell far short of that goal. Between 2000 and 2006, the period when he was in office, Mexico created only 1.4 million jobs. Though accurate figures are difficult to arrive at, the Government Accountability Office estimates that during each year of Mr. Fox’s presidency between 400,000 and 700,000 illegal immigrants arrived in the U.S. from Mexico. The number of illegal immigrants from Mexico was roughly equal to the number of jobs Mr. Fox did not create.
If one were to do a CAT scan of Mexico’s economy, one would find a country with the potential to become a job creator’s paradise. Mexico has far more oil than fast-growing Dubai (a net labor importer) and almost as much as Qatar, another labor importer. If Mexicans working in the U.S. are any indication, Mexico has a work force that is trained and disciplined. With thousands of miles of coastline, Mexico is a tourist haven. It shares a border with its largest trading partner. But even with these positive attributes, Mexico’s job-creation engine has stalled.
Well, actually, asking the question is a good one, but his analysis is completely bogus. Follow me here.
I’ve pointed a number of times (I’m on the road and so don’t have a ton of time to link to past blogs but be my guest and search here for "immigration" and/or "free trade") that Mexicans, and other people who come here without proper documentation, do so to escape economic deprivation in their own countries. You think people want to leave their families, sometimes resulting in not seeing their children for years? The economic crisis in Mexico is, in part, due to the economic policies of the U.S.–need I utter the word NAFTA?
After NAFTA passed, the peso crashed and millions of people were pushed further into poverty. The problem is not job creation: the problem is having jobs that allow people to put food on the table–which Mexico cannot do as long as a central driving force behind the economy–as is true in other countries hit by so-called "Free trade"–is to push down wages. Mr. "Heart of Darkness" Kurtz-man, if you generate jobs that don’t pay a living wage, why do you expect people to stop feeling that economic disaster?
