If Churchill Could See Us Now

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: July 16, 2013 

NYTimes

Whenever we go into political drift as a country, optimists often quote Winston Churchill’s line that Americans will always do the right thing, after they’ve “exhausted all other possibilities.” I don’t think that’s true anymore. Churchill never met the Tea Party, and he certainly never met today’s House Republicans, a group so narrow-minded and uninterested in governing — and the necessary compromises that go with it — that they’re ready to kill an immigration bill that is manifestly in the country’s economic, social and strategic interests.

Proving Churchill at least half-right, we have foolishly ignored immigration reform for years. But today, finally, we’ve found a coalition of Senate Democrats and 14 Senate Republicans who have courageously compromised on a bill that, though not perfect — it still spends too much on border defense — opens more opportunity for the high- and low-skilled immigrants we need to thrive and gives those already here illegally a legitimate pathway to citizenship. Yet it appears that brain-dead House Republicans and their pusillanimous leadership are not inclined to do the right thing and pass a similar bill. We’ve exhausted all other possibilities, and we’re still stuck. That is how a great country becomes un-great.

Many House Republicans are resistant to a bill because they come from gerrymandered districts dominated by older white people who have a knee-jerk resistance to immigration reform — borne of fears of job-loss to illegal immigrants and a broader anxiety about the changing color and demographics in America. And rather than trying to defuse those fears by putting the immigration bill into the larger context in which it belongs, a critical mass of House Republicans seems committed to fanning them. 

What world are we living in today? Countries that don’t start every day by asking that question do not thrive in the long run. We are living in a world with at least five competing market platforms: North America, the European Union, South America, Greater China and East Asia. We have already derived great economic benefit through the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta. And, if we were thinking strategically, one of our top foreign policy priorities would be to further integrate North America.

I wonder how many Americans know that we sell twice as many exports to Mexico as to China, and we export more than twice as much to Mexico and Canada as to the European Union and three times as much as we do to East Asia. I wonder how many Americans know that out of every $1 of Mexican exports to the U.S., 40 cents comes from materials and parts made in the U.S. By comparison, out of every $1 of Chinese exports to the world, just 4 cents comes from products made in the U.S., according the National Bureau of Economic Research. And, with the discovery of natural gas in America leading to more manufacturing returning to this country, and the prospect of pending energy reform in Mexico, there is an opportunity to create the lowest-cost, clean-energy manufacturing platform in the world, with mutually beneficial supply chains crisscrossing the continent. 

To enhance such a win-win growth strategy that would incentivize more Mexicans to stay home, we should be investing in a major expansion of transportation corridors to facilitate truck, intermodal (including shipping and high-speed rail) and human traffic in a much more efficient and legal fashion. In short, we’d start with where we want and need North America to go, so we can thrive even more, and then forge a border and immigration policy with both Mexico and Canada to achieve that. We’re doing just the opposite — starting with a fear-fence and not thinking strategically at all.

“Instead of lowering the barriers to create a modern border and a more competitive and secure continent, the Republicans propose to deal with illegal migration by doubling our border patrol to over 40,000, which is 10 times more than it was before Nafta, at an additional cost of more than $40 billion,” notes Robert Pastor, founder of the Center for North American Studies at American University, and author of “The North American Idea: A Vision of a Continental Future.”

“The Republicans claim they are interested in free markets, but instead of trying to flatten the continent, they are fracturing it,” added Pastor. “Instead of eliminating the huge rules of origin tax and creating a common external tariff and a seamless continental market, they want to wall off our neighbors.”

By focusing exclusively on fences, we will not stop undocumented immigration — because 40 percent of illegal residents are people who overstayed their visas — but we will fail to invest in the infrastructure that represents a critical foundation for our future. More important, says Pastor, we will also be telling “the Mexicans and the Canadians that we view them as threats, not as partners.” 

The whole approach is shortsighted, does not play to our strengths, increases the deficit and ignores where the world is going and how America can best compete and lead within it. Churchill would be aghast.