The Mexican Initiative: A Workable Guest Worker Program

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Publisher's Corner
The Mexican Initiative: A Workable Guest Worker Program
By Sal Osio, JD
April 10, 2007
The flow of intensive affordable labor will become an increasingly and critical need to sustain our American service, construction and agricultural sectors. To overly counter this needed flow of labor from Mexico is the equivalent of 'cutting our nose to spite our face'. Once more: the law of unintended consequences due to lack of vision and over-reaction to a problem.
It is almost universally agreed that as a sovereign nation we have the right and the obligation to protect our borders and regulate our immigration. It is almost universally agreed that in practice we have a broken system that desperately needs mending. And it is also agreed that we are incapable of adopting an equitable and workable solution, primarily due to incompetent leadership and political paranoia from right wing anti-immigrant, anti mestizo, 'Lou Dobbs' type pundits.
Accordingly, I recommend that the Mexican Government takes the initiative. After all, labor is a precious and vital commodity that needs to be regulated and judiciously exported by the source country. If Mexico does not restrict the flow of labor into the US it will find itself lacking this precious commodity for its own development and economic well being. In the past Mexico added 1 million new workers each year to its population for whom it needed to provide jobs. Lacking the growth to employ this labor force, one half of the workers immigrated north to find the employment not found in their home country.
However, the dynamics are changing and changing rapidly. According to the Mexican census and validated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Mexican families are now averaging 2.2 births as opposed to the 5+ births of yesterday. As a consequence, based on its current rate of economic growth, Mexico will be able to employ the new workforce of 500,000 per year in the near future. This demographic transition spells economic doom for our country. Without the supply of labor from Mexico our three industries - construction, services and agriculture - will be economically handicapped. Additionally the US consumer will face unreasonable price increases which will significantly add to our consumer price index, fueling inflation and retarding our economic growth.
Maybe Mexico has not come to the realization that it, and not the US, is in control. The tables are turning. We will need their labor more than what they can supply for our critical needs. Our demand for their labor, in fact, will increase in the immediate future as a result of our shrinking labor pool due to the aging of our 'baby boom' generation.
Now is the time for Mexico to take the initiative. Formulate a guest worker program on its own terms with adequate protection for the most affected of the interested parties: The worker. If Mexico were to enroll and process 250,000 workers per year to fill pre-screened US employment opportunities, which immigrants would be accorded multiple entry US visas allowing them to return home for vacations and to visit their families, at least two times per year, based on agreed to terms of employment and the oversight of a US-Mexico joint agency, the problem of undocumented, unregulated immigration would come to a screeching halt.
The above would not have to be tied to a path to US citizenship. Mexico will need the return of their workforce. Also, by not sealing our borders and allowing a reasonable entry-exit visas that would allow the Mexican worker to visit his family, he would not find the human need to start a family in the US. After all, the undocumented worker settles and starts a family in our country because effectively he cannot return to his homeland once he is here
Although only a partial solution to our needs which require a greater magnitude of guest workers - over 500,000 new jobs per year have been filled by undocumented workers for the past 10 years according to the Pew Hispanic Center - the reduced labor import will fend off catastrophic economic consequences to our affected industries. Also, we will be in a position to implement similar programs, should the need prove to be critical, with Central American countries.
Hispanic Vista addresses herein a petition to President Felipe Calderon of Mexico: For the sake of US-Mexico economic reciprocity and good neighbor diplomacy, take the initiative, after all, Mexico controls the source.
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Sal Osio, JD is the publisher of HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com). Contact at: SPosio@aol.com