Self-investment, work in Mexico the solution
Now we have presidential permission to build a fence on the border with Mexico. Whoopee.
Will the immigration problem go away? Nope.
Voter laws, limitations on benefits, using the overextended National Guard and hundreds of other corker legal ideas have not stopped the flood of illegal immigrants.
What is next? The Arizona Legislature and Congress need to look at the milestones of work-force development in Mexico.
The largely uncoordinated and unorganized work force falls victim to low wages and horribly bad management.
The maquiladora policy of establishing factories in Mexico was a partial answer. Maquiladoras provided work sites.
The problem is that the concept did not spread to all phases of Mexican employment. Work-site development, trade and labor organization are basics for concentrating and holding on to good laborers.
Now that competing political interests are active in Mexico, the Legislature and Congress need to insert issues and support for issues.
It is time for stronger self-investment policies and labor organization in Mexico. Together, those two issues will do more to stem flows of illegal immigrants than the dull, trite thinking that brought us a fence.
MIKE DURHAM
Phoenix
This letter to the editor appears online only and not in the Tucson Citizen’s print edition.