May 22, 2006

By Patrick Corcoran

Not too many people are looking to the Mexican Congress for the solution to America’s intractable immigration dilemma, but perhaps they should.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, one has to wonder whether President George W. Bush will ever have the opportunity to sign the comprehensive (and thus far still mythical) immigration accord that is his foremost domestic task of 2006. With immigrants protesting and minutemen patrolling, it seems that a continuation of the ongoing tragedy unfolding on our southern border is as likely a solution.

President Bush has put forward a guest-worker program as the best way to bridge the gap between opponents on each side of this debate, although in his May 15 address to the nation it received less attention than the suggested deployment of the National Guard to reinforce an overwhelmed US Border Patrol. Bush and the supporters of a guest-worker program hail it as a key to making entry into the United States safe, legal, and orderly.

Beyond the obvious fact that the Bush administration is the principal organ promoting it, there are reasons to doubt that merely throwing out 200,000 visas (the latest number included in the bill now floating through the Senate) will provide any semblance of order to the immigration chaos. As pundits from across the political spectrum have pointed out (the latest being Peter D. Salins, of State University of New York, in the op-ed section of The New York Times: “Assimilation Nation,” May 11, 2006), guest workers’ programs have historically failed because the guests often overstay their welcome.

A possible answer to this riddle was provided in an April 17 piece published in MexiData.info, “Mexico and the Migration Phenomenon.” A 1,600-word document adopted as a resolution by both houses of the Mexican Congress in February 2006.

The relevant passage appears near the end: “Mexico could significantly enhance its tax-preferred housing programs, so that migrants can construct a house in their home communities while they work in the United States.”

And there it is, a way to make guest workers truly temporary.

Applied at first only to Mexican nationals (by far the largest immigrant population in the United States), it could work like this: guest workers coming to the United States would have ten percent of their income deducted and placed into a risk-free savings account, with a US$3,500 annual maximum. At an interest rate of three percent compounded quarterly, a guest worker contributing the maximum into their account would wind-up with a total of US$23,217, more than enough to put you on your home-owning way.

Theoretically, the sum could be spent only on a house in Mexico. As with the 401k, there would be significant penalties for withdrawing the money for any purpose other than that which was intended.

Whatever practical attachment to the United States that might develop over the course of the work period would be outweighed by the fact that after six years, the erstwhile guest would be a jobless illegal resident of the United States, risking capture and deportation, while there would be a brand new home waiting for him or her in Mexico.

Banks with a presence in Mexico and the United States, such as British-owned HSBC and America-based Citibank, could be tasked with enrolling the guest workers. The typical client would be assigned a bank employee on each side of the border, to see them through from day one to day 2191, when they would ideally be walking into their new house.

Such a plan would be ideal for the guest-worker program about which President Bush often muses, with each guest matched to a specific job before his or her arrival. Newly arrived employees, with their savings accounts arranged ahead of time along with their jobs, could begin saving for their houses immediately. This program also meshes nicely with Bush's belief in the almost sacrosanct virtue of homeownership.

This program would not be a panacea for all the ills of the massive migration phenomenon. The plan sketched out above is not a substitute for enforcing our own laws, it does not help us control our borders, nor does it answer the question of what to do with the 12 million undocumented residents already here. Unfortunately, it also resembles a savings program in the bracero program in the 1940s, when workers were defrauded of up to ten percent of their wages.

Moreover, this proposal is quite obviously little more than an embryo of an idea. It would certainly need thousands of hours of research and planning before moving from concept to policy.

But promoting homeownership fits into what can be the only effective long-term strategy in reducing illegal immigration: addressing the immense disparity in the quality of life between the two sides of the US-Mexico border.

And President Bush is right in thinking that a guest-worker plan is the reasonable middle ground between the two extremes of the immigration debate. Anything that could make that middle ground more easily traversed will be more likely to bring this raging debate to an acceptable conclusion.

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Patrick Corcoran is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila. He can be reached at corcoran25@hotmail.com.