The Mex Files

Today’s New York Times editorial must have been written by someone who reads The Mex Files:

Immigration is good for the financial health of Social Security because more workers mean more tax revenue. Illegal immigration, it turns out, is even better than legal immigration. In the fine print of the 2008 annual report on Social Security, released last week, the program’s trustees noted that growing numbers of “other than legal” workers are expected to bolster the program over the coming decades.

One reason is that many undocumented workers pay taxes during their work lives but don’t collect benefits later. Another is that undocumented workers are entering the United States at ever younger ages and are expected to have more children while they’re here than if they arrived at later ages. The result is a substantial increase in the number of working-age people paying taxes, but a relatively smaller increase in the number of retirees who receive benefits — a double boon to Social Security’s bottom line.

We’re not talking chump change….

Exactly one year ago, the Mex Files pointed out that remittances are good for both the home country of “illegals” and the country in which they are working.

The only financial problems caused by immigration are both red herrings.  Even a dirt-poor “third world country” like Jamaica can provide heath care to all its residents, so claiming “illegal aliens” are responsible for health costs in the United States is ridiculous.  What causes health care financial problems in the U.S. has to do with the way it’s financed, and national priorities, nothing else.

One reason I moved back to Mexico was that I can get comprehensive health care coverage for about $250 US a year, and in Texas has squat.  Though I haven’t started working (I’m waiting on my “green-go card” to get processed) I do pay Mexican taxes, just as anyone else — even tourists — pay taxes when they are in the U.S. And we’re not talking “chump change” either.

This isn’t meant to apply to just Canadians. Gringos are apt to behave in the same way, though a lot of us (U.S. us’s) are in Mexico visiting relatives or acquaintances. Proportionately, more Canadians are package tourists and “springbreaker” tourists than we are, but a drunk is a drunk is a drunk.

Sami”, in a comment on my post about the latest Canadian death, and the coverage in that country’s media , made a good point:

In Mexico, being drunk in public is a big no no, something that will get locals and foreigners into trouble. I see so many tourists coming for cheap drinks and hookups… wandering around obnoxiously and throwing up in the bushes. The way a lot of tourists act in Mexico is not how they would conduct themselves in Canada.

A Canadian commentator on the Thorn Tree Message Board writes:

I also think it’s a miracle more Canadians don’t get seriously injured or killed in Mexico. The common denominator in a lot of these incidents is booze. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone say they were going to Mexico, and the first thing they intend to do is get drunk. We as Canadians don’t seem to regard any other tourist destination this way. Mexico means cheap booze and no rules to many of us, and it’s a recipe for disaster. Sadly, a lot of the resorts seem to promote this behaviour. A while back, my wife and I were on a beach in Mazatlan, and were next to a large group of young people from Calgary. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and they were just so terribly drunk. They were rude, obnoxious, guzzling tequila on a public beach and directing racial slurs toward the vendors selling things on the beach. They could not walk a straight line, but were swimming at a place with a fairly strong undertow. Several had sunburns that probably would require medical attention. I was embarrassed by their behaviour, hopefully they stayed close to their hotel, and didn’t inflict themselves on the rest of the city. Most places in the world acting this way in public would have unwelcome consequences, so why do so many Canadians think they can get away with it in Mexico?

Todd Babiak of the Edmonton (Alberta) Journal writes:

Talk to Mexicans about Canadians and you’ll hear two stories. They love Canadians. Thank you, friends, for coming to our country! Talk a little longer and you’ll hear the second story, and it isn’t pleasant. Canadians, who like to think of themselves as a mild and friendly people, do not enjoy an enviable reputation in these tourist towns. We’re famous for drinking to excess, for patronizing and insulting Mexicans, for treating their country like the site of a giant frat party.

Indeed, certain parts of Mexico have an extraordinarily high crime rate. In the past seven years, there have been 172 reports of violence against Canadians in the country. But 172 out of seven million isn’t a particularly high number, considering the way many of us act in Mexico. If we were to parade drunkenly up and down Whyte Avenue in Edmonton or 17th Avenue in Calgary, drinks in hand, shouting at women, we would be inviting violence. It’s no different in Acapulco or Cancun.

I’ve hinted at the Mexican distaste for drunks before. Of course Mexican get drunk and act like assholes like anybody else, but they do it in their own country, behind closed doors (even in towns where shop doors are always open, cantinas have louvered “saloon doors” — and usually a wall before you get to the barroom — so the public is spared the sight of what goes on in there.

I was talking about “race” and class, but I once saw a drunk called every filthy name in the book for … well… acting like a drunk (he pooped his pants). What made the occasion remarkable among the many times I’ve seen drunks berated in public in Mexico was that he was “güero” and that among the insults used by the very “Aztec-nosed” brown Mexicans, the called the guy a “dirty Indian”. Otherwise, the sight of ordinary Mexicans expressing open contempt for a drunk wouldn’t have been anything I would have noticed. It’s the way things are.

Also, along the lines of “race” and class… I’ve noticed that the white foreigners (I’ve never heard this from persons of color) sometimes say the “Mexicans hate us.” However, when I think about it, the folks who say this are the ones who spend an inordinate amount of time in those off-the-street cantinas.

Or bars that cater to foreigners and the well-heeled. Though I don’t drink, I’ve been in my share of clubs. Fresas and nacos both get shit-faced, of course, but are usually with a bunch of friends that pull them out before they get kicked out. And, they know better than to hit on someone else’s significant other. They know the rules. The foreigners don’t. OK, in the tourist bars, Mexicans act like tourists, but the folks who go to the resorts in places like Cancún or Acapulco are either Fresas (and dickheads by definition), or playing big-shot for a couple of days, and again, probably with friends who know the social rules and will keep them out of trouble. IF they do get into trouble, no body is going to claim it was some elaborate plot, anyway.

Back in 2004, I’d written that William S. Burroughs thought he was seducing Mexican cops with liquor and drugs (and sex), when the reality was that back in those days, only a junkie or drunkie would take a job that made a person a social pariah in the 1940s.

I’d warned people in my little Mexico City guidebook too:

…public drunkenness is not much tolerated outside of tourist areas like the Zona Rosa. I have seen drunks publicly berated and nearly attacked outside of these areas.

And did I mention Pancho Villa, who was a teetotaller, had drunks in his army shot as cowards and traitors? Plutarco Elias Calles — when he was Revolutionary Governor of Sonora — dealt with public intox by putting drunks in front of the firing squad. But, then Plutarco was the son of an alcoholic and I’m told children of alcoholics can be pretty hard-core.

Sorry, folks… but the Hollywood image of the drunken happy Mexican is just in the movies.

The Mex Files is skinny, sober and… we hope… kinda on the ball. But being broke is no way to go though life…

They’re not going away… but Mexican farmers are.  Anyone who still believes the tortilla crisis and continued exodus of the Mexican farmer are not related to subsidies is frankly delusional. 

The ultra conservative Heritage Foundation notices who really benefits:

Growers of corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans, and rice receive more than 90 percent of all farm subsidies, while growers of most of the 400 other domestic crops are completely shut out of farm subsidy programs. Further skewing these awards, the amounts of subsidies increase as a farmer plants more crops.Thus, large farms and agribusinesses–which not only have the most acres of land, but also, because of their economies of scale, happen to be the nation’s most profitable farms–receive the largest subsidies. Meanwhile, family farmers with few acres receive little or nothing in subsidies. In other words, far from serving as a safety net for poor farmers, farm subsidies comprise America’s largest corporate welfare program.

Left-leaning “Common Dreams” focusing on the impact in one country, Jamaica, noticed the same problem:

But this analysis, which is typical of many “progressive” complaints about trade and globalization, seriously missed its mark. And if you were watching last week as the U.S. Congress moved toward passage of a massive new farm-subsidy bill, the real source of Jamaican farmers’ problems became apparent.The farm bill, which the House of Representatives has approved and which the Senate could vote on this week, calls for taxpayers to fork over some $180 billion to farmers during the next decade. That’s a 70 percent hike above the cost of current farm-subsidy programs, most of which represent direct payments to wealthy farmers and agribusinesses.

Those subsidies make it possible to export millions of tons of food so cheaply that native farmers in places such as Jamaica can’t possibly compete.By guaranteeing U.S. farmers a minimum payment for commodities such as corn, rice and soybeans, the government encourages overproduction. That drives down the market price, forcing even higher subsidies and creating surpluses that can be shipped to Jamaica and elsewhere.The (London) Financial Times noticed the fancy footwork the subsidy bill is using to get around WTO rules:

Subsidy programmes that support prices, because they encourage farmers to produce more and hence push down world prices, are classified as “trade-distorting” under WTO rules and are subject to stricter limits. Despite the administration’s rhetoric that it was moving from supporting farmgate prices to protecting farmers’ incomes - the so-called “revenue assurance” principle - the proposed move was modest. The “marketing loan” programme, which subsidises farmers when the prices of their produce fall below a set level, altered the calculation of the price a little to take account of actual market prices, but the change will not be dramatic.

And… that means MORE U.S. corn will be flooding Mexico. Which means, less Mexican corn, more corn farmers coming into the U.S. to work for U.S. agribusiness, meaning…Max Correa, secretary general of a campesino group called the “Central Campesina Cardenista,” estimates that “for every five tons bought from foreign producers, one campesino becomes a candidate for migration.” The importing of the proposed 450,000 tons of white corn, he told a press conference last week, is likely to eliminate more than 100,000 jobs in the rural sector.