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Old 10-08-2007, 01:42 PM
bobman0330 bobman0330 is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2004
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Default Felipe Calderon is smart

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At least 3 great points in this interview:
1. "The way to stop illegal immigration is to build economic growth and opportunities in Mexico, not fences." Unquestionably true. If we invested all the money being wasted on fences in helping Mexico provides jobs for its own citizens, we'd probably do more to reduce the number of immigrants here. Also, remittances have been shown to be very effective at producing economic growth in receiving countries.
2. "Capital and labor are like right shoe and left shoe." Also true. Immigration opponents love to claim that there aren't jobs that Americans won't do. That might be so, but with unemployment under 5%, who will replace any immigrants that we kick out? Even if Americans hypothetically would work as janitors or fruit-pickers, they're certainly not going to quit better jobs to do so.
3. "He said he hoped the United States and Mexico could see each other as allies as they confront challenges from Asian economies. 'I hope that one day the people in America could see the Mexican people as friends, like allies.'" Another great point. De-integrating the Mexican and US economies will necessarily result in a decrease in productive efficiency. At a time when China and other Asian countries are challenging American superiority, is this really the time to voluntarily make ourselves less competitive?
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