Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Mexican nationals, likely cartel members, recently crossed the border and shot and wounded an American hiker. Did they assume that Joe Biden was still president, and so it was still a veritable open season on Americans without consequences?
Mexico also recently balked at allowing a U.S. transport plane to land, returning its own nationals apprehended as illegal aliens.
Was its attitude that Alejandro Mayorkas was still Homeland Security Secretary and thus working with Mexico to ensure that millions of illegal aliens could stay in the U.S. indefinitely?
After four years of Biden’s appeasement, Mexico seems to assume that it has a sovereign right to encourage the flight of millions of its own impoverished citizens illegally into the U.S. and further assumes that it can fast-track millions of Latin Americans through its territory and across our border.
Mexico either cannot or will not address the billions of dollars of raw fentanyl products shipped in—mostly from China—and then processed for export to the U.S. by its cartels across a nonexistent border.
Mexico seems to have little concern that some 75,000 Americans on average die from mostly Mexican-imported fentanyl each year—more deaths in just the last decade than all the Americans killed in action during World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined. Who then is our friend, and who is our enemy?
This appalling death toll is in part due to the deliberate efforts of the cartels to mask fentanyl as less deadly narcotics or camouflage the poison by lacing it into counterfeit prescription drugs.
Mexico encourages its expatriate illegal aliens to send back some $63 billion per year in remittances. That huge sum constitutes one of Mexico’s largest sources of foreign exchange, surpassing even its tourist and oil revenues.
These billions are often subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. America’s local, state, and federal governments provide billions of dollars in food, housing, and health care entitlements that allow Mexico’s citizens, illegally residing inside the U.S., to free up the cash to be sent home.
According to U.S. census data, almost every year, the trade deficit with Mexico has increased from about $50 billion twenty years ago to $160 billion today.
That astronomical figure neither includes the $63 billion American outflow in remittances nor the multi-billion income from the cartels’ illicit drug sales in the U.S.
Although one would never know it from the rhetoric of Mexican politicians, the entire Mexican economy, both legal and illicit, hinges on America accepting a worsening asymmetrical relationship.
Yet the U.S. has a lot of leverage with Mexico to ensure that it no longer assumes a permanent huge trade surplus with the U.S., turns a blind eye to massive fentanyl shipments that kill thousands of Americans, encourages its own citizens to enter their neighbor’s country illegally, and counts on massive cash remittances from the U.S.
Loud rhetoric, threats, and ultimatums do not work.
Usually, they earn Mexico’s furious retorts about Yanqui imperialism and ancient bitterness about a lost Aztlán.
Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador used to brag about the millions of illegal aliens that were residing in the U.S. He further advised expatriate Mexican-Americans not to vote for Republicans, whom he felt one day might close the border.
Obrador rarely reflected on why millions of his own citizens were fleeing his own country—only that it was a “beautiful” thing that they did.
Did Obrador hate Trump more for challenging him by trying to stop the illegal influx or Biden for embarrassing him by welcoming millions of them into the U.S.?
So, what should be the U.S. response to Mexico’s passive-aggressive policies?
Smile, praise Mexico as our greatest trading partner, and then quietly inform them that illegal aliens will be bussed to the border.
Once there, they could be given a generous care package, escorted through a border door, and left on the Mexican side from which they entered and thus could then be escorted in caravans home in the same manner that they arrived.
To maintain cordial relations and politely gain Mexico’s attention, we need a radical change in tone and action beyond just ending catch-and-release, finishing the wall, and making refugee status requests possible only in the home country of the applicant.
Rather than worry about who is sending remittances, why not politely place a 20 percent tax (about $12 billion) on all cash sent from the U.S. to Mexico?
We could also hail our mutual friendship and then reluctantly slap tariffs on imported assembled goods until the two-way trade is roughly balanced.
Who knows, once the U.S. is respected again and not considered an easy mark, Mexico could once again become a fine and reciprocal friend to the United States.
My Dad used to say when referring to a group’s poor behavior, ‘it’s the family business’. Mexicos politicos family business has been bought and paid for, for 100 years by strong men through coup d’etat and cartel money and aggression. By default Mexico ‘family business’ is corruption. Their current regime is no different.
To affect change one must use the only language the regime understands. Swift action, axe the cash, backed up with military force. Nothing less will do.
Some refer to the Mexican migrants as “Los burritos de Troya.” Like the Greek’s ‘peace gift’ horse to Troy (who presumed to have won their war), the Mexicans have long had a plan on how to reconquer territories lost to the young US in the 1850s.
Mexico will continue to do what it wants because there has been no requirement in change of behavior. Which is why Mexican nationals (likely, a cartel member) shot and wounded an American citizen while hiking because they do not care who comes in their way.
If we know that Mexico is dependent on remittances, which surpassed almost all other sources of foreign income for Mexico including tourism, oil exports and most manufacturing exports, why not put a 20 percent tax on cash. Mexico is the second-highest receiver of remittances in the world, trailing India.
Criminal penalties need to be significant. There are Mexican nationals that have come into the United States on multiple occasions. Committing the the same crimes over and over again, only to laugh in the faces of our CBP officers. Somehow Mexican nationals find their way back into the United States. This must not continue to happen. Penalties need to equal the crimes committed. Sending an offender back to Mexico, can often ensure there release.
Fentanyl – is the source of income for the cartels, supplied by China (killing America’s youth) securing our southern border is a first step, but we also have our northern border as well and other ports of entry to be concerned about. While China is aware of its actions, the United States must be firm in its negotiations to end this abuse.
Why are we handing out welfare, snap and other forms of subsidies to immigrants, both legal and illegal, here in the US while they send cash back to their native countries? It should not be an impossible task to identify those sending remittances back ‘home’, then halt all taxpayer subsidized welfare to those individuals/families!
No doubt the rhetoric from the left will be how Trump is a careless individual starving families here in the USA. Trump ran on America First, not free money to citizens of other nations in the form of remittances.
If halting the ‘purple’ money going to other countries results in impoverished families, then those governments have a duty to their citizens to correct their economic issues.
1836 was a good year.
I’m surprised Trump hasn’t already done it.
Are the drug cartels Mexico’s actual government?
50% tax on money send-backs to Mexico.
No welfare for illegals. American taxpayers should not be on the hook for paying illegals to be here.
Death penalty for drug dealers.
End birth right citizenship for illegals. Make it retroactive.
Take away incentives and the behavior changes immediately. The oldest rule in behavior modification plans. Why does it appear that we don’t understand this?
Problem solved. This is an easy one.
Mexico’s considered the most corrupt country in Latin America. People wanting to do business there must add 30 percent to their budget for payoffs up & down the line. In other Latin American countries, the graft is only 10 percent or so.
As to trade, we need “fair & balanced” trade with other countries as opposed to unbridled capitalism. Capitalism is the best system to alleviate poverty and reward success, but it can be at the expense of human rights. We also need to protect certain strategic industries.