I wrote on immigration for the bulletin this Sunday, but I decided to write on the subject for my blog too, because I just read one of the best articles yet on the subject. The article is by Tim Padgett, the bureau chief for Time magazine, but appears in America (the Catholic news magazine published by the Jesuits. The article is "Rethinking Immigration Reform: It Starts in Mexico" (unfortunately, if you don't subscribe to America, this link will only give you access to the first paragraph of the article!). Padgett was in Mexico on assignment and got into a conversation with some Mexican journalists who, in an unusual turnabout, stated that the US should build a wall because it would force the Mexican government to address the issue of immigration and the huge gap between the very few very wealthy and the multitudes of poor in Mexico. While I do not agree with building the wall (and suspect the Mexican reporters were somewhat speaking tongue in cheek), the U.S. government should be taking some action to pressure the government of Mexico to address the needs of their own people that cause them to seek better lives in the U.S. Padgett points out that while home to the telecom billionaire who is the world's richest man, almost half of the country's 106 million people live in poverty with a quarter of those living on about $1 a day. In one of my favorite lines in the article, Padgett states:

My Mexican colleagues were simply acknowledging what most Americans still fail to grasp: immigration reform is not domestic policy; it's foreign policy.

Padgett points out that we will have a problem with illegal immigration as long as so many people in Mexico live in desperate situations. He then says:

But if we could work with countries like Mexico to steer more of their wealth and ours to the impoverished by means of better jobs, education and entrepreneurial opportunities--if we were to steer billions to those efforts instead of fences--we might not need fences.

One of the issues that cripples Mexico's economy, according to Padgett, is their banking system, a system that has "exorbitant interest rates and maddening red tape," making it all but impossible for small enterprises and those living in rural areas to get loans. Padgett then states:

Many of those immigrants have now decided to do what Mexico's banks won't. Mexicans in the United States send home as much as $25 billion in remittances each year; and while much of it used to be wasted on flashy pickup trucks, wide-screen televisions and (apologies to my fellow Catholics) ostentatious churches, more is now being used to start local microcredit banks. The hope, of course, is that fostering new, job-creating businesses at home will eventually keep Mexican workers at home.

Padgett visited a city where it is working, Santa Cruz Mixtepec. He says that 2/3 of the 3000 residents of this town lived undocumented in the U.S., but after several of the wives started a microcredit bank a few years ago, some have returned home from the States to start businesses and others are deciding not to leave. So far 95% of the loans have been paid on time. The woman Padgett interviewed, who is one of the bank's founders, said that this is because

locals want to make this program work "in order to bring our families back together."

All of this gels with my experience of visiting Mexico and meeting families whose sons or husbands were living in the U.S. sending money home. They would have loved to have these types of opportunities enabling them to keep their families together. Padgett, however, notes that the residents of Santa Cruz Mixtepec realize that microcredit will not solve all of their problems though because of the deplorable state of education in Mexico. In addition to recommending that the U.S. invest its money in these types of venture, Padgett ends his article recommending our government push the government of Mexico on what he calls "the most urgent reform" needed in Mexico:

dismantling the power of its ravenous monopolies and oligopolies, which control everything from television to cement to sliced bread. They are the main reason that credit and capital get choked off from Mexican society, but Mexico can get away with it simply by exporting its desperate workers to the United States.