Why would someone choose to be an illegal immigrant?
Why would someone choose to be an illegal immigrant? Hope for a better future, of course. Mexico’s government, realizing that millions of its citizens are denied that hope, is finally trying to build it. A new program supports immigrants who invest in agribusinesses that would slow the flood of human capital leaving Mexico.
This is a good, if limited, idea that carries with it a much bigger lesson for the United States’ immigration policy. Invest in job development and training in Mexico — and many workers will happily stay home.
Right now, the deck is stacked against most Mexicans. In 2005 the Inter-American Development Bank asked immigrants (Mexicans and others) who send money home what they had left behind. Fifty-four percent had no job. The 46 percent who did work averaged only $150 a month.
This lack of a future would send nearly anyone with initiative and a sense of family duty searching for something better.
Since the 1990s, some Mexican state and local governments have tried to take advantage of those qualities. The governments match funds sent by immigrants in the United States for specific improvements in their hometowns: roads, schools, water systems.
In 2001, Mexico’s federal government started the “three for one” program, matching these infrastructure projects with funds from three levels of Mexican government.
Now, as Chronicle reporter Jenalia Moreno noted in a recent story, Mexico’s federal government is offering up to 40 percent in matching funds to prosperous immigrants in the United States willing to invest in viable Mexican agribusinesses.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/5422021.html