Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
President-elect Donald Trump recently had a “talk” with newly elected Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum about the millions who have crossed through Mexico to enter the U.S. illegally.
Afterwards, Trump reported that their conversation went well, and supposedly both had agreed to secure the U.S. border.
But given long-standing, de facto Mexican policy to rely on and profit from an open U.S. border, it was not long afterwards that Sheinbaum claimed she had not been so accommodating.
Or, as she now put it of the Trump conversation, “I give you the certainty that we would never—and we would be incapable of it—propose that we would close the border.” And of course, she is right: Mexico never would wish for a secure U.S. border, although it is wrong that she is incapable of guaranteeing one should she choose to do so.
What, then, is going on?
Over the last half-century, Mexico has gradually, even insidiously, developed both a one-sided, asymmetrical relationship with the U.S. based on professed mutual benefit and yet sought to leverage America by claiming it is supposedly guilty for two centuries of oppressive treatment.
How does the strange U.S.-Mexico supposed co-dependence seem to work?
The Mexican government has traditionally seen the U.S. as an endlessly wealthy country, liberally governed, and more or less willing to listen to Mexico’s grievances of the sort that are common in asymmetrical partnerships.
About 60 percent of the Mexican people traditionally in polls have voiced a positive view of the United States, yet a surprisingly low number when considering the millions who try to cross its border illegally each year.
Nonetheless, Mexico for decades has conveniently explained the vast influxes across the border, unaudited and illegal, as largely in America’s interests—and mirabile dictu even to Mexico’s disadvantage. Polls tell, however, a vastly different and far more accurate story.
Logically, some 61 percent of Mexicans in a recent 2024 Pew Center Research Poll voiced favorable views of the United States, whose open borders, generous welfare systems, billions of dollars in remittances, and now-defunct immigration laws they see as entirely in their interest. In contrast, 60 percent of Americans, one of the highest numbers on record, now hold unfavorable views of Mexico, perhaps because of the cynical harm it has done through a perforated border.
Mexico says its emigrants, along with those from Central and South America who cross its own borders with relative ease—often with tacit support—supply America with generations of industrious, low-cost labor, robbing it, in a sense, of millions of its own citizens.
It adds that the attractions of El Norte mean that Mexico must put up with human caravans crossing its own sovereign territory to supposedly meet the hungry American demand for labor, drugs, and sex. Indeed, nearly every recent Mexican president has argued that America’s thirst for lethal fentanyl is responsible for the creation of Mexican cartel lords that now run large swaths of Mexico itself.
However, the problem with such ancient and modern disingenuousness is that even if the United States accepted these excuses, apologized, and promised to close the border and keep clear of Mexican affairs, Mexico would grow even more irate. The reason why is that the current relationship has now grown unbalanced to the point of absurdity—sometimes evidenced in past polls that revealed a majority of Mexican citizens both believed in the mutually exclusive propositions that the American Southwest properly still belongs to Mexico and yet they wished to leave Mexico to emigrate to a non-Mexican northward if given the chance.
In truth, Mexico would face insolvency if it did not receive its current some $63 billion in U.S. remittances, largely sent by its own people who crossed into the U.S. illegally. Trump talks of levying a 25 percent tariff on Mexican imports should Mexico not cease undermining the American border. An additional lever would perhaps be to slap a 30 percent tax on all remittances sent from the U.S. to Mexico. That would both encourage capital to stay in the U.S. and raise over $20 billion in excise fees, more than enough proverbially to “pay for the wall.”
However, such largess is still more one-sided since much of the remittances are made available through not just the industriousness of Mexican expatriates but also the generosity of American taxpayers. Their multifaceted subsidies to the undocumented free up billions for them to help support millions of Mexico’s poor in a fashion that Mexico City apparently is either unable or unwilling to ensure.
The annual flight of millions from Mexico is a sort of updated version of Frederick Jackson Turner’s “frontier safety valve theory” of the American West. Accordingly, the Eastern poor and potentially rebellious fled westward in hopes of a new, better life rather than marching on Washington for cancellation of debts or redistribution of property. Mexico City apparently feels that without their own El Norte “frontier,” millions of southern and indigenous Mexican citizens might instead head en masse to Mexico City.
As for the cartels, Mexico knows well that China sends raw fentanyl to its country unimpeded, where cartel factories prepare it for export to America’s addicted and recreational users. There, disguised as less toxic drugs and even foodstuffs, fentanyl will end up killing up to some 100,000 Americans a year—an annual death toll nearly double the total number of U.S. fatalities in the Vietnam War.
Mexico, which also helps China avoid tariffs on its exports to the U.S. by assembling its products in NAFTA and tariff-free Mexico, certainly knows that the Chinese seek both to profit from its cartel ties and to kill Americans and undermine its security in the bargain. The macabre gambit is likely seen as the Chinese version of an updated Opium War payback, with the twist that the former addicts are now the suppliers.
In an equally sick way, the cartels infuse into the Mexican trickle-down economy, albeit in nefarious and criminal ways, some $30 billion in additional U.S. dollars from Americans addicted to imported Mexican-made drugs tailored for the U.S. market. The presidents of Mexico usually say little about this second source of billions in U.S. foreign exchange or claim American addicts, not Mexican suppliers, explain the growing death and destruction on both sides of the border.
While in office, former President Obrador often said strange things. Two of the most pugnacious were his high-five boast that some 40 million of his own citizens had fled Mexico to cross the border: “Just imagine. There are 40 million Mexicans in the United States—40 million who were born here in Mexico, who are the children of people who were born in Mexico.” (Obrador never explained why his own citizens would willingly flee their own country to a nation habitually caricatured in the Mexican press as racist and exploitive.)
Obrador also periodically delighted in interfering in US elections by urging Mexican expatriates in the U.S. to vote against all Republicans, presumably because they seemed at times to threaten to kill the Mexican golden goose of illegal immigration.
Indeed, in 2023, Obrador urged American Hispanics to never vote for Ron DeSantis’s presidential primary campaign—an irony given Mexico’s chronic complaint of Yanqui interference in Latin American politics.
Obrador believed, as many presidents before him no doubt concurred, that the 40 million expatriates and Mexican-American children, if they were distant from Mexico long enough, would romanticize the country, and so, like most immigrants, become a powerful lobbying force on Mexico’s behalf.
In La Raza literature of the past, and in Mexico’s chauvinistic moments, illegal immigration was envisioned as the ironic response to the ancient “theft’ of the American Southwest. The problem with that thesis is that most Mexicans, as polls have shown, would prefer to live in an American Southwest than a Mexican south.
And it is also increasingly likely that Mexican-Americans will be more prone to vote for border security than open borders—again further proof that their self-interest as patriotic Americans trumps Mexico’s cynical attempts to use them as political pawns. If those trends continue, the American Left and the Mexican government may well lobby for a secure border, in fear they are only augmenting a growing MAGA constituency.
In sum, Mexico understands the myriad ways that an open border, the destruction of U.S. immigration law, illegal immigration, and emigration of millions of its own citizens to America are entirely in its own interests and so hopes to see the continuation of the Biden-Harris-Mayorkas appeasement.
But, given the huge numbers of human trafficking, the chaos, the drugs, the violence, and the financial costs of supporting millions, an open border is increasingly seen by Americans as not to their advantage—as we saw in the recent Trump victory. That reality, not the rhetoric of Mexican presidents, will govern all future negotiations—a truth that President Sheinbaum should digest before she sounds off about a border that she knows her country has done so much to deliberately destroy—and to America’s detriment.
If you do ‘t believe that the goal of the Nazicrat party is to loot the USA then just read this article. Everything stated here has the full support of the Nazicrat party.
Actually your name should be soft, milk toast soy boy. If you obviously can’t stomach the truth bombs coming from these articles, please go back and shove your head in the sand, where you belong.
Mexico’s president no doubt has been assured by The Deep State that they will prevent President Trump from acting on his threats.
These immigration discussions inevitably bring my thoughts to “why aren’t better Countries being built by patriotic citizens across the globe?” In this modern world it is not because of lack of natural resources, with the possible exception of Antarctica. It’s not due to the lack of motivating cultures either; our planet is covered with great cultural roots.
If I started listing the waste of available resources extant in countries who are willingly exporting their #1 resource, that being their citizenry, all I would accomplish is raising the expected anger that comes so often from revealing the truth.
63 billion in remittances, How about putting a tariff on all remittances? Not just to Mexico either.
5% is a good start, maybe 10 %
Keep up the great work sir.
The solutions are there for stopping this invasion – close the borders to all immigrants (except those with work visas that can be monitored), finish building the wall, tax remittances to Mexico & other countries, impose tariffs on Mexican goods & dump illegals back on Mexico.
At some point, the U.S. Military will have to destroy the Mexican drug cartels – that have bought off Mexican politicians & administrators – due to the immense, on-going loss of life here. As well, China must be sanctioned for its involvement in the drug trade.
Mexico is considered the most corrupt country in Latin American and will likely experience another revolution with the impoverishment in which case we better be prepared for millions flooding our southern border.
At some point, a U.S. – based citizen “…militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” will have to secure the border.
Our incoming Border Czar has just a few months to make that unnecessary.
A Few Dozen TIER-1 Operator Teams……and the CARTELS are FINISHED…..in 12 months!
They’ve bought off plenty of American politicians as well. It is said that the cartels OWN El Paso, and many other towns in AZ, NM, and TX, and even further north.
As for corruption, this is what I was taught as a child, but looking at our own government, I have to wonder which country is more corrupt, though ours is from the top, primarily, while Mexico it is on the street level, up.
The Garden Purchase puts to rest any supposed border disputes, outside of outright military invasion by Mexico to conquer territory. War upon the Mexican/American (yes, Americans are involved in it too, on this side of the border) Border Crime Cartels is coming. Count on it. As we draw down our military presence around the World (no longer the suckers playing World Cop for wealthy Nations who should be defending themselves) it will be intensely concentrated along the border and North & South of it, wherever action is needed. We’ll be returning to our traditional National interests here, in North American Continent, out to the Caribbean and down to The Canal. We are weeds to the hip with Mexico by NAFTA 2, and this is a GOOD thing. But “Bad Guys” are of no benefit to Mexican or American citizens. They will learn the lessons taught to the Medilline Cartel in the 80s (no longer existing…the Cali Cartel the message and adjusted their behavior). The future is bright for NAFTA 2 members, and the smaller countries in the heart abroad will benefit too, especially when N.A.W.A.P.A. is once again pursued, and deserts are turned into grasslands, fests, farms, ranches,towns and cities (and America becomes home to 700 million citizens, MANY of whom shall be Spanish speakers).
“Garden Purchase” should read “GADSEN PURCHASE”
Don’t you just love autocorrect?
The guy who invented it died recently. May he restaurant in peace.
Annex Mexico and rid the country of its corruption. I would surmise the majority of the population would vote in agreement for a management change and welcome a chance at prosperity and true self governance.
Of course we need to clean our own house first.
A new sheriff in town…’nuff said.
Mexico is a Failed State. It is corrupt and placates the Cartels and in return they get fealty from the Cartels. Profit for everybody in Mexico, kill the US, that is the mantra of them. Mexico needs the people who come here from Mexico to send money back to Mexico, it is the first or second source of income. There needs to be a surcharge put on all remittances from the US to Mexico and that money needs to go towards the Wall. It does not have to be a physical Wall but an effective Wall. All-in-all though, I like the Saudi Wall, with Towers and Machine Guns with all sorts of sensors and cameras. A country without control of it’s border is not a country.
Regarding taxing remittances, suggest that they be reportable on annual tax returns, with some credit towards liabilities as an incentive. That would probably reduce the problem, many of them might be getting paid cash as illegals.
If the target were 30%, make it 45%, with 15% going towards Fed income tax as an example.
In Georgia when the state started having a hard time collecting the gas tax from the gas station owners because they would fail to pay and then use ownership changes as a tactic to avoid the taxation the state simply changed the law to collect the taxes from the distributers. Using this as a model the federal tax man could simply look to the money transferring enterprises instead of individuals for the tax on remittences. Just saying.
1) It is a one-way street. I lived in Mexico from 1981-1982. If you ran across the border into Mexico from the US, you would be shot. I know. I got shot at once for not stopping at a border check point.
2) I was in Medical School at the time. About 1/2 of the patients we saw were born in “big county” referring to LAC-USC Medical Center. It was common for women to make there way to LA to deliver their children-who, inturn, would then be US citizens. And this was in Guadalajara, 1500 miles south of LA.
Effective 01/20/25 and until further notice, the Mexican and Canadian borders and the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines of the continental U.S.A. and Alaska and Hawaii are closed to all foreign traffic. This includes all imports, civilian and commercial. Exports will continue.
Time to hit the “reset” button.
The reckoning cometh.
I wonder what percentage of remittances are from American Citizens. What percentage are from illegal aliens? Perhaps a new administration policy to tax remittances would “alienate” established Mexican-American citizens, thus pushing them out of the MAGA camp.
All the United States would have to do is pass what I call a “Bet the Farm Act”, a federal law that would impose civil forfeitures on any property used to employ or house (or otherwise aid or abet) illegal aliens. Hiring an illegal alien to pick fruit or vegetables for you would be a “bet the farm” decision, subjecting your entire farm to forfeiture to the federal government. Similarly, renting an apartment to an illegal alien would be another “bet the farm” decision, subjecting your entire apartment complex to forfeiture to the federal government.
Pass the “Bet the Farm Act” and no employers or landlords would be willing to touch illegal aliens with a 30-foot pole. As a result, illegal aliens would have NO PLACE TO WORK OR LIVE in the United States and NO CHOICE but to SELF-DEPORT.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is the leader of The Revolutionary Institutional Party(Marxist Revolutionary Party). She is a Marxist.
Homan wants to deport criminal illegal aliens. Rather than loading up aircraft carriers and taking them back to each his own country, Mexico may or will find millions of these hard core criminals on the south side of the new border and they’ll have to deal with that. Breakfast for a million? And criminals will be the first wave.
Also, from movies and reports I suspect a lot of firefights using the latest weapons, machine guns, tanks, bombers? Gang members are like Islamist terrorists, have little respect for human bodies and are used to gun battles and desecration of bodies. The worse it gets the more the media will use it against Trump..
I hate to underestimate President Trump but I hope he’s thinking out of the box. These gang members are different than America’s usual enemies. And now the firefights will be in America’s back yard.
I am guessing that Mexico feels that they are immune to a beat-down. Over the years we have done too much for them and let them get away with taking our companies and let them build stuff there to keep some people employed. In return we get drugs and the cartels running the show. This needs to end and we need to stop playing nice.
You claim that the $63 billion that are sent to Mexico annually are “largely sent by its own people who crossed into the U.S. illegally.” What is your data source on this? How do you know that most of this money is coming from undocumented/illegal immigrants? Only a minority of Mexicans in the United States are here illegally (NIH estimates it’s about 21 percent). Why do you assume that only illegal immigrants send remittances? Lots of Mexicans here have Green Cards or citizenship (either by birth or naturalization) while still seeking to support loved ones at home.
Please stop villainizing immigrants and spread lies about them. Pretending that all immigrants in the United States are illegal is an insult and, quite frankly, beneath you.
Over the years, I have spoken with many Mexicans who blame the USA for all their internal problems. I counter immediately that Mexico’s infinite corruption is the source of their ills. They are indoctrinated from their early schools years that everything wrong with Mexico is because of the USA. This leads quickly to my follow-up: if the USA is so terrible, why does such a high percentage of Mexico’s population prefer to live illegally here rather than in their homeland?
Given what I have read about the cartels using remittences as an avenue for the repatriation of narco dollars to Mexico with entire villages being paid kickbacks to receive said remittences a 30% tax on the remittence money sounds like a good idea.
Destroy the cartels like Israel is destroying Hamas and Hesbola . The sooner the better.
@Mike Burnson: Mexicans say, “Everything wrong with Mexico is because of the USA”
That’s the same attitude which leads soccer stadiums of Mexicans to chant “9/11” at the American team.
The reality is that Mexico would be an infinitely worse blankhole were it not for its proximity to the USA.
The other reality is that kicking all the illegals out of the country is long, long overdue, along with a rework of North American trade relationships. And both problems could be solved more or less overnight with the will to do it.
Remember the Alamo!