Opening the Borders: Solving the Mexico/U.S. Immigration Problem Analysis - Book Report/Review Example

Analysis of "Opening the Borders: Solving the Mexico/U.S. Immigration problem for our sake and Mexico’s” In order to demonstrate the diverse circumstances along the U.S.-Mexico border and the various approaches to managing regional and bi-national relations in the current global context, Larry Blasko in Opening the Borders: Solving the U.S.-Mexico Immigration Problem explores how to make the U.S.-Mexico border more open and simultaneously more secure against illegal crossings. Larry provides examples of border relations ranging from hostile to cooperative and illustrate the types of issues – including political and ethnic tension, labour and immigration, and cooperation in the realms of environmentalism, transportation, health, and trade – that can either plague a region or make it prosper. According to Larry, “Borders have always had significant functions: protecting countries’ populations from outside threats, regulating the flow in and out of geographical boundaries, and helping to define socio-cultural identities within nation-states are just a few of their multiple objectives” (p. 7). Such aspects of a border’s purpose are still applicable, of course, and we make no claim that international boundaries are irrelevant in the present-day world. In fact, unlike hundreds of years ago, today there is a pervasive sense of urgency to control the increased flows of people, information, currency, and goods that cross borders. This issue has reached a paradoxical state: one side, there has developed an obsessive necessity to control border flows, while on the other, despite increased security, we are witnessing the highest flows of people and goods across international boundaries in history. The traditional functions of international borders are being tested by globalization – a phenomenon whose momentum has the potential to severely alter the future state. Historically, Mexico’s foreign policy has been defensive, stressing isolationism and nonintervention in other countries’ affairs. After its territorial losses to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, Mexico promoted foreign policies that would shield it and other countries from foreign influence. Since the 1980s, however, this approach to foreign policy has come under pressure from globalization as well as economic and political changes in Mexico. The Texas Rebellion (1836) and the U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848) exemplified the border-focused conflict in the first half of the nineteenth century. As Larry pointed out, “The Mexican War itself was going quiet nicely – unless you were Mexican” (p. 12). Disorder and bloodshed continued after the demarcation of the new political line following the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) and the Gadsden Treaty (1853). In the post-1848 period one of the greatest sources of strife arose from recurring transboundary Indian raids (p. 13). As depredations into its territory continued year after year, Mexico bitterly protested the seeming indifference of the United States to the problem. In turn, the United States filed its own complaints against Mexico. Problems with slave hunters, smugglers, robbers, cattle thieves, and desperate characters of all shades who congregated in the borderlands further increased the tension between the two countries. The general lawlessness characteristic of many American living along the border led to defiance of Mexico’s territorial integrity, including repeated filibustering expeditions into several northern states (p. 19). Yet, the U.S. frontier, especially Texas, also endured depredations from criminal elements. These lawbreakers used the Mexican borderlands as their base of operations. Cattle rustling and smuggling particularly disturbed the Texans. Mexican retaliatory raids fomented by Anglo oppression, such as Juan N. Cortina’s exploits in the Brownsville-Matamoros region in the 1850s, fanned racial hatred even more (p. 20). By the late 1870s relations between U.S. and Mexico had become strained almost to the breaking point as each country accused the other of failing to suppress border lawlessness (p. 25). With the advent of the railroads in the 1880s and the subsequent influx of more civilized settlers and influences, however, marauding and raiding activities declined. During the next three decades the frontier experienced relative peace and order (p. 28). The Mexican Revolution of 1910 introduced a new era of instability, with Mexican bandits and revolutionaries raising havoc in the Texas and New Mexico borderlands (p. 35). For a time, residents in the U.S. Border States lived in a fear that extremists from the neighboring country, aided by militant Mexican American, would attempt to retake land lost by Mexico in the nineteenth century. The tensions of the decade occasioned several crossings by U.S. troops into Mexican territory, including the unsuccessful chase of Pancho Villa by General John J. Pershing in 1916 (p. 40). War between the two countries seemed likely at mid-decade, but the crisis abated as the violent phase of the revolution waned and as the U.S. turned its attention toward World War I. Thereafter, confrontation over borderlands violence ceased to be a major diplomatic issue between the two nations. For the most part, cross-border cooperation between the twin cities has been cordial, in spite of the vast differences in services, governance, and local regulations. In additional to local community officials and police forces, there is an added layer of state and federal oversight. Issues and concerns on a broad number of topics such as border retail commerce, safety and security, bridge operations, cross-border fire response protocols, and drug interdiction have been routinely handled on a day-to-day basis. One prime example given by Larry in his book was of local cooperation in the border Liaison Mechanism (BLM) created in 1993 and co-chaired by the U.S. and Mexican consuls in border “sister cities” (p. 110). This activity was mandated to bring together representatives of local, state, and federal agencies, along with representatives of the business community, to review a variety of cross-border issues ranging from port security to health care. In terms of bringing “law and order”, Larry suggest, to the border region, those at borders have had a very significant impact in limiting unauthorized crossings of the boundary in the most urbanized sections. But overall, it has merely pushed the great bulk of extralegal crossers to more rural areas along the U.S.-Mexico boundary. This is hardly controversial or novel argument. In this regard, one of politician’s more noteworthy accomplishments has been to render the “illegal” less visible. But while unauthorized immigrants are still crossing the U.S.-Mexico boundary (overall, probably with rates of success similar to those they had at the beginning of the 1990s) they must pay a much higher price to do so – literally and metaphorically. Larry argued, if we limit our analysis of “gate-keeping” importance to measurements of its success or failure in meeting the official goals of curtailing unauthorized immigration and achieving control of the U.S.-Mexico boundary, however, we will miss much (180). First, politicians have had many important effects that go beyond narrow measures of “success” or “failure” – most notably the dramatic jump in the number of deaths of unauthorized immigrants crossing into California. Second, and perhaps most important, we must recall that politicians – while significant in and of itself – is the culmination of a much larger process of increasing bounded-ness of the United States vis-à-vis the U.S.-Mexico divide (at least in terms of unwanted immigration). In this regards, we cannot confine our evaluation to a single, highly localized operation. As part of a more general and extensive set of developments, gate-keeping is part and parcel (somewhat paradoxically) of a growing openness of the boundary as illustrated by the increasing transnational flow of goods and capital. At the same time, to the extent that gate-keeping embodies a growing attempt to regulate the migrants, it has contributed to an increasing marginalization of unauthorized immigrants, largely through a process of criminalization of “illegals”. Such developments are representative of radical changes – over the long term – in official and public perception and practice of unauthorized immigrants and of the U.S.-Mexico border. Reference: Larry Blasko. (2007). Opening the Borders: Solving the U.S.-Mexico Immigration Problem of Our Sake and Mexico’s. Level 4 Press, Inc. Read More