Posted on 01/28/2003 12:50:34 PM PST by albertabound
Fox sees more Mexicans moving to Canada
Diane Francis Financial Post
Monday, January 27, 2003
Mexico's President Vicente Fox hopes that as many as 125,000 Mexicans each year will be able to immigrate to Canada in future, or half of Ottawa's annual immigration target.
"Mexico would gladly like to supply Canada with up to half of that [250,000 annual target]. Very gladly," he said in an exclusive interview with the Financial Post during his attendance at the World Economic Forum. "I was not aware that Canada is bringing in that many immigrants a year. I will take the immigration issue up. It's very, very interesting."
Mexico's biggest political challenge is to create one million jobs a year for its rapidly growing population. Out-country migration has been beneficial historically, and now nearly one of every five Mexicans lives in the United States -- 20 million Mexican-Americans and 3.5 million illegal Mexican residents compared to Mexico's population of 100 million.
This has greatly reduced unemployment, given Mexicans opportunities, and also resulted in billions of dollars of income for Mexico in the form of money sent home to relatives. But there is resistance in Washington to more mass migration from Mexico or anywhere else, Mr. Fox said.
As for Mexican immigration to Canada, Mr. Fox said he asked Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, in bilateral talks, to expand the successful 10-year-old program involving temporary visas to Mexican farm workers.
The program has grown since the early 1990s from the participation of a few hundred Mexicans to today''s 15,000 a year.
"We want to expand this in other areas such as the service sector where Mexicans do excellent work," he said. "We have brought this up but not been able to get anything going so far."
Asking Ottawa to help pave the way for landed immigrant status to large numbers of Mexicans could be a win-win situation, he said.
One of the impediments to new policy initiatives of any kind, however, is that everything has been overtaken since 9/11 by Washington's preoccupation with border security and military interventions abroad, he said.
Mexico's priority agenda involved the issue of illegal immigrants in the United States, trade irritants and the battle against drug traffickers. It has filed a grievance at the World Court to halt the execution of 50 Mexicans held in U.S. jails and facing the death penalty. Mexico has no death penalty.
"Now it's about the border and we want a 'Smart border' concept [like Canada and the U.S. are negotiating] because it is more difficult to cross the border since 9/11.
"The war on terrorism and the Iraq situation is also of great concern. War bothers me and we are doing everything to prevent it. Mexico has a seat on the UN's Security Council," he said. "We are against terrorism but we are also against unilateralism [a U.S.-British invasion of Iraq without UN endorsement]."
But even if there is a UN resolution to invade Iraq, Mexico will not commit troops "because Mexico never sends troops" outside its borders. It declined to do so during the Gulf war.
On Venezuela he said the political crisis is an internal problem, and the "only solution is electoral."
But the rise in oil prices triggered by Venezuela's problems combined with worries about a potential war in Iraq may look beneficial to a big oil producer like Mexico, but it is not.
"Oil prices go up and that's good but high oil prices reduce economic growth and we lose because of the reduction in trade," he said. "We are for fair, just oil prices in the range of US$22 to US$25 a barrel."
Mr. Fox is in Davos, as are other heads of state, to talk up their countries to the world's richest businesses and to hold political meetings. He met with pharmaceutical and manufacturing giants before this interview Saturday and met with Microsoft's Bill Gates and financier George Soros yesterday.
The Mexican story is a good one.
Like Canada and the United States, Mexico has benefited greatly from the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1993 and also from the election 2 1/2 years ago of Mr. Fox, widely regarded as Mexico's first democratically elected and non-corrupt leader.
Inflation, unemployment and interest rates are at historic lows and foreign investment holds steady, along with the currency and political stability. About one-third of its economic output is exports (Canada's is 40%) and both countries ship 85% of their goods and services to the United States. Both Canada and Mexico have gained market share in spite of the U.S. slowdown and war fears.
"We have the highest foreign reserves ever, US$50-billion, and have reduced our debts," he said. "Foreign direct investment has gone up."
But to keep creating jobs Mexico this year has earmarked US$40-billion to build airports, roads, ports, housing and power generation projects. It has also undertaken a program of micro loans and gave between US$100 and US$50,000 to 1.2 million small businesses. It will speed up expansion of its natural gas industry by letting foreigners supply services for the first time in decades to its government oil company.
A potential dark cloud is China's ascension into the World Trade Organization because its cheap labour will be in competition with Mexican workers. "China is a big challenge. It will force us to work more on technology and our educational levels so we can upgrade our jobs," Mr. Fox said.
dfrancis@nationalpost.com
© Copyright 2003 National Post
By way of Greenland, I hope.
HA, Ha!!!!
Canada, get ready to print every document that your government has ever come out with in Spanish! And hire only bi-lingual (not French/English, but Spanish/English) police, etc. Lets see the "Great White North" deal with this kind of crap...
I was just thinking, Moosonee . They can pick ice worms in the winter and enhance the Polar Bear diet in the summer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.