With ever increasing speculation as to whether or not President Donald Trump will “Build the Wall” pursuant to his campaign promises, we have a unique moment in history to reflect and assess how the “it’s complicated” relationship status (to borrow from Facebook
With ever increasing speculation as to whether or not President Donald Trump will “Build the Wall” pursuant to his campaign promises, we have a unique moment in history to reflect and assess how the “it’s complicated” relationship status (to borrow from Facebook) arose between The United States of America and The United Mexican States, and how we could improve it.
Did you even know that the actual name of “Mexico” is merely our shorthand for “The United Mexican States”?
In a 2005 opinion piece on WND.com, Erik Rush raised some excellent points. He stated:
“I consider the proposed actions (Annexation) more of a moral obligation than anything else. The government of Mexico is doing it wrong – their policies are oppressing their people, stultifying their social and economic growth and negatively impacting the United States.”
Let’s take this by the numbers, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center study:
“Asked about their willingness to migrate to the U.S., 35% (of Mexicans) say they would move to the U.S. if they had the opportunity and means to do so, including 20% of adults in Mexico who would do so without authorization. This is unchanged from 2009 when a third of adults in Mexico said they would be willing to migrate to the U.S., and 18% said they would do it without authorization (Pew Research Center, 2009).”
The very same report also indicated that as recently as 2015, 48% of Mexicans believed that they would have better lives in America. So all told, just shy of half the population wholeheartedly believed that America offers a better life, and over a third were willing to leave their country to get it, and 20% were willing to do so illegally! It’s no small wonder we have a serious illegal immigration problem.
The interesting thing is that all of this could have easily been averted, had the victorious American forces in the Mexican-American war been authorized by Congress to stay in occupation and make preparations to admit the States of Mexico to the Union. Instead, we had the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, and later the Gadsen Purchase which, in my humble opinion, only served to create an unstable, broken nation-state partially embittered against us to this day as evidenced by their overthrow of nine governments from 1854 on.
Indeed the “All Mexico Movement” of 1848 may have had the right idea after all, but alas, just as it has before in our history, bigotry won out as The University of Texas Arlington explains:
“...many Anglo-Americans balked at the prospect of assimilating a population of eight million non-whites. Ironically, the racism which had helped to fuel Manifest Destiny also defined its limits. Southern expansionists like John C. Calhoun, who had earlier demanded the annexation of Texas, now scoffed at the idea of granting U.S. citizenship to conquered Mexicans.”
So today I raise the question: What greater show of brotherhood and of a post-racial nation could we provide than to invite the Mexican States to join the Union with open arms? This isn’t satire-- I’m not joking. Rather than constructing a wall that costs billions and fosters enmity between our nations and our own people at home, why not welcome 129.6 million new American citizens to our great nation. Half of whom believe they will have a better life here, a third of whom wish to leave their home to join us, and a fifth of whom would defy laws and possible death to do so. Truly through the completion “Manifest Destiny” and using diplomatic means instead of war, we could do more than “Make America Great Again.” We could make America greater than we’ve ever been before. Stretching from Canada to Guatemala and Belize, imagine it: a single, unified American nation.
With the added 1.261 trillion USD of GDP, the bolstering of our forces with the Mexican military (easily integrated as they use our older equipment already), and our law enforcement supplemented by Federales, the Cartels could be eliminated within a decade. The industrious Mexican people embraced in the Constitutional protections that our Founders devised would flourish and bless us for centuries to come adding as they always have to our cultural beauty with all past division behind us. We could truly be Los Estados Unidos de America, una nación bajo Dios, indivisible con Libertad y Justicia para todos.
Now if only we could get Canada on board… Somebody call Trudeau... Oh, and add a few desks to the Senate and House Chambers, we’ll need the room.