OPINION:
A new survey conducted by The Washington Post and Mexico’s Reforma newspaper shows that Mexicans are sick and tired of migrants traveling through their nation in an attempt to get to the United States. As people from Central America flood their nation, more than 6-in-10 Mexicans complain these migrants are stealing jobs and benefits from Mexicans. A majority wants to deport them.
As new U.S. policies have forced more asylum seekers to stay on the south side of our border as they wait for incredibly backlogged hearings, northern Mexico is indefinitely full of caravans of people sleeping in public spaces, and hoping for handouts of food and clothing.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will give these migrants work permits, but did not specify who was going to actually take care of their other needs. This angered the governors of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas, who blamed the administration for not providing enough resources. They even signed a public statement saying they no longer could offer resources to the overwhelmed regions.
“The number [of migrants] that the federal government is talking about is impossible for us to deal with,” said the governor of Coahuila, Miguel Angel Riquelme Solís.
Seems like the ruling elite of both countries are not willing to do as the people desire: to “secure our borders.”
In response, Mr. Lopez Obrador — a longtime advocate of migrant rights — has decided to increase Mexico’s immigration enforcement. Instead of suffering a public backlash, 51 percent of Mexicans support using their national guard to stem the tide of undocumented immigrants.
“Many expected Lopez Obrador — who once compared Trump’s hostility toward Mexicans to the way Adolf Hitler spoke of Jews — to condemn the U.S. president,” according to Kevin Sieff and Scott Clement of The Washington Post. “Instead, he has largely submitted to Trump’s demands on migration.”
Turns out, Mexicans feel like the average red-hat wearing Trump supporter in the United States.
Perhaps they are racist? Maybe they don’t like brown-skinned workers because of their own xenophobia?
With the U.S.-centric accusations of xenophobia taken out of the equation, it’s easy to see that identity politics is not the cause of — or solution to — all of a nation’s problems. It shows that a massive influx of migrants is not sustainable for any nation’s future.
Who knows? Maybe this Mexican antipathy toward Central American migrants will allow Democrats to take a fresh, more realistic, look at our own situation here in the United States. They need to come to terms with the fact that money, bedding and food just doesn’t appear because of liberal tears. In fact, protesting Mr. Trump’s immigration policies might be the “whitest” thing a person on Earth can do.
Mexicans don’t enjoy the same “white privilege” as Nancy Pelosi. That means that they are fed up with the government forcing average citizens to foot the bill for migrants. It doesn’t mean they are cruel, heartless or racist. It simply means they can do math.
Open-border posturing, no matter how emotional the rhetoric is, does make the cold, hard reality of arithmetic go away. Someone has to foot the bill for the upkeep of all of these migrants.
Turns out, even Mexico doesn’t want to pay for that.
• Mark Meckler (@MarkMeckler) is president of the nonprofit Citizens for Self-Governance and a co-founder of the tea party movement.
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