Economic Nudge for an Immigration Overhaul

The newfound urgency among Republicans to improve their standing among Hispanic voters is not the only reason that an immigration policy overhaul may have a better chance this year than in 2007, when Congress last tried to confront the issue and failed.

By some key measures, the problems underlying illegal immigration — the economic and demographic pressures that have drawn Mexicans north for decades in search of jobs and a better life, and the challenges for the United States of securing its borders — have diminished over the past six years.

The Mexican economy, while still riddled with inefficiency and inequality, is nonetheless humming along, providing many more job opportunities for Mexican workers. And in Mexico, the source of about 6 in 10 illegal immigrants in the United States, the birthrate has plummeted over the last few decades, shrinking the pool of potential emigrants.


“We are at a moment when the underlying drivers of what has been persistent, growing illegal immigration for 40 years have shifted,” said Doris Meissner, a commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under President Bill Clinton and now a fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a research group. “There are some fundamental new realities.”
At the same time, one of the most contentious elements in previous battles over the issue — border security — has also become less of a partisan flash point. Even among border-state Republicans, there is optimism that the billions of dollars spent in recent years on fences, additional agents, surveillance drones and other measures is having a real effect.

“Yes, there’s been improvement in border security, and, yes, it helps a lot,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who is a leader of the bipartisan group seeking compromise legislation, said when asked whether the politics of getting a deal this time around would be easier because of stepped-up enforcement.

There is still debate about whether the changes are permanent or would be reversed in the event of another sharp economic downturn in Mexico or across Latin America — or a strong rebound in economic growth and demand for labor in the United States.

But for now the population of illegal immigrants in the United States shows little sign of growth. It fell to 11.1 million in 2011, the most recent year for which figures are available, from a peak of 12 million in 2007, the Pew Hispanic Center said in a report on Tuesday. By one new estimate, the number of people who managed to cross the Mexican border illegally into the United States fell to 85,000 in 2011, down from 600,000 five years earlier.

With the scale of the problem stabilizing for the moment, or even shrinking, some experts say, there is more room for political compromise than the last time around.

“The immigration debate in recent years, as it has played out in the last two presidential campaigns, has not kept pace with the facts on the ground,” said Paul Taylor, the director of the Pew Hispanic Center. “I do sense that the nature of the debate is changing and catching up with the reality.”

Mexico’s population growth has fallen to an annual rate of 1.1 percent in the first decade of this century from 3.2 percent in the 1960s, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The number of people under 15 years old is declining in Mexico, and the number of people ages 15 to 29 will start doing so in the coming years, an important shift given that most illegal immigrants arrive in the United States before age 30.

Children are staying in school longer, an indication of an intention not to emigrate in search of low-skill employment, and the development of a middle class has further depleted the numbers of Mexicans compelled to seek a livelihood in the United States.

The statistics at the border are also striking evidence of a diminished flow of people seeking to cross into the United States illegally. Reflecting in part the deterrent effect of tighter border patrols, as well as the economic and demographic shifts, the number of apprehensions along the border has fallen sharply. Those people who have gotten through are being caught and deported at record-high rates.

Some analysts say the drop in apprehensions reflects not so much greater control of the border as a recognition by potential immigrants that the chances of finding a job in the United States have fallen over the past few years. And in any case the decline does not alter the most compelling fact of the debate to both sides, which is that there are 11 million undocumented people already living in the United States whose status must be addressed in any comprehensive legislation.

But even though the economic and demographic changes have remained largely in the background of the debate, analysts say they could offer more reassurance to conservatives in particular that giving legal status to those immigrants would not simply produce another wave of them.

Still, some skepticism about changes to immigration policy remains. Mexico continues to suffer from social instability, and the prolonged weakness in the American labor market makes it harder to draw long-term conclusions about the relative attraction of coming to the United States. Many Republicans continue to view Mexico warily, seeing in the government’s difficulties in controlling the violence and general lawlessness created by drug cartels a dangerous instability that could create deeper cross-border troubles.

“Mexico is on fire and about to blow up,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, a supporter of the bipartisan package, expressing concern about whether the positive trends in illegal immigration were permanent.

Mexican Violence Prompts Self-Policing by Civilians

MEXICO CITY — An outbreak of violence in rural southwestern Mexico has led civilians in a string of communities to take up arms and police their own communities, shining a light on the lack of state security as a new administration prepares to take on the country’s violence.
The latest eruption of citizen policing began about three weeks ago in the small, mountainous town of Ayutla de los Libres, in Guerrero State, when residents picked up rifles and machetes and arrested at least three dozen people they said the authorities had failed to apprehend.

Since then, the practice has spread to other areas of the state, with movement leaders and local human rights officials saying more than a hundred small communities are now patrolling themselves.

Last week, local news media reported that indigenous communities in Jalisco State were also planning their own citizen police forces.

Vigilante justice is not uncommon in Mexico, particularly in rural, indigenous areas where there is a lack of police officers and mistrust of state institutions runs deep. But the spread of drug and organized crime gangs into remote regions in recent years has worsened the sense of lawlessness there, creating the kind of flare-ups in violence that the new government of President Enrique Peña Nieto has promised to control with a planned paramilitary force.

The new vigilante movements join older, more established citizen police forces in Guerrero State, some dating to 1995. Before the outbreak this month, the vigilante movement already claimed to be the law in 77 towns and villages in the state. The movement has also spread to Colonia Lebarón, in the border state of Chihuahua, where residents set up a civilian defense force in 2009 after two residents were murdered, and Cherán, in Michoacán State, whose residents expelled the police in 2011, closed entrances to the town and armed themselves against violent illegal loggers believed to be protected by criminal syndicates.

In Ayutla de los Libres, the citizen police squads have built their own checkpoints, copying the other grass-roots police movements in the region. The fate of those arrested, who are suspected of extortion and kidnapping, is uncertain. Abel Barrera Hernández, a human rights official in Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero, said residents would investigate the offenses and hold a public trial by month’s end.

There are no independent estimates of how many people are participating in these efforts. But movement leaders expect more and more communities to join in.

“The most important weapon will be the organization of the people,” said Bruno Plácido Valerio, who helps organize community policing in Guerrero. He said he had been getting regular calls from other community leaders who want to join the movement.

The state governor, Ángel Aguirre Rivero, appears to be tolerating the turn of events, striking a balance between promises to restore state authority while acknowledging the gaps in policing by providing some of the more established community police with vehicles, uniforms and radios. Federal officials sent in the military to take control of checkpoints in Ayutla de los Libres and several other towns on Wednesday, according to the Guerrero State government.

“We understand you, and that’s why we have to exercise all the force of the state to protect you,” Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, the interior secretary, said Thursday at a news conference in Nayarit State.

Much of the self-policing occurs in indigenous communities, where poverty and marginalization run deep. Many of these communities have long harbored suspicion of the state; indeed some consider themselves autonomous from Mexico, which at times has granted them de facto self-rule. “They have been permitted to re-evaluate their institutions, recreate them, and confront something that the Mexican state has not been able to resolve,” said Sergio Sarmiento Silva, an expert on indigenous movements at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Some officials, including the governor, are balancing calls to respect state authority while advocating for some legal recognition of the community police groups to fill obvious gaps in law and order. “We should propose a constitutional reform where the participation of the community police is included, because in many places where they operate, delinquency levels are down,” Mr. Aguirre Rivero said.

Mr. Plácido Valerio said the community police would abide by due process for those detained.

Meanwhile, they are already facing some of the thorny issues encountered by the professionals they replaced. On Tuesday, a self-defense civilian unit in Atliaca, Guerrero, shot and killed Benito García, a 30-year-old suspected of stealing. The details remain murky. Mr. García’s family says he was innocent and has demanded a state investigation.

As Mexico's traffickers ship drugs north, they leave addicts in their wake

 MEXICO CITY

Exponential growth in the trafficking of drugs through Mexico – destined for the large consumer market to the north – is leaving a growing number of addicts in its wake. 

Heroin, crack cocaine, and methamphetamines were once unheard of in Mexico, but today rehabilitation centers are filled with addicts. Being the top supplier of illegal drugs to the US has made Mexico a consumer nation, too, as cartels have sought to expand the local market over the past decade.

Illegal drug use in Mexico – still well below levels in the United States – rose 87 percent between 2002 and 2011, according to the latest national survey of addictions. In the survey, 1.5 percent of respondents reported having consumed illegal substances in the previous year, compared with 0.8 percent in 2002. And drug rehabilitation professionals caution that higher levels of use may exist, given that the data is self-reported. They also note that an alarming increase in drug use  among women and adolescents between 2002 and 2008 has persisted, although the survey suggests overall illegal drug use has plateaued since 2008.

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“The reality is that … in the organizations and institutions that work directly with this population, we see that [addiction] is on the rise, and that the adolescents who come here are younger and younger,” says Blanca Ferreyra, who coordinates addiction treatments at the Love Life Foundation, a Mexico City nonprofit. “By 14 years old, they’ve got a two- or three-year-old addiction.”

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That wasn’t always the case. A decade ago, drug rehabilitation professionals say they mostly attended to older patients whose addictions began in their 20s, and tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana were the most common drugs. Although these substances are still the most prevalent, today more young people are beginning with crack or inhalants – cheap, extremely addictive, and increasingly accessible.

Guava-scented inhalants

In a facility painted bright yellow with a grassy inner courtyard, the Love Life Foundation attends to young addicts remitted by Mexico City’s juvenile justice system. A dozen doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists treat about 120 adolescents a year, as well as their families.

Dr. Lorena López Ordaz, the foundation director, says youth addictions in Mexico City can be spawned by a number of factors, including less parental involvement and overcrowded classrooms.

“There is a decomposition of the social fabric [in Mexico],” she says.

And readily available drugs – Cocaine, crack, marijuana – are filling the void. In the capital, at-risk youth may start out on cheap inhalants like paint thinner and glue or, increasingly, a certain type of cement, which pushers are now providing with the scents of popular fruits like guava and tamarind, both to mask the smell and attract young consumers.

Although traditionally associated with kids living on the street who use them to stave off hunger, inhalants are being used by a broader range of young people, not just those living in poverty. In Mexico City, 45 percent of the 12- to 14-year-olds who had used a controlled substance in the last year had used inhalants.

“Before it wasn’t so easy to find these substances,” Dr. López says. “Now you can find anything in any little corner store,” she explains, suggesting that dealers are everywhere.

Treatment according to income

Unlike the wealthy who can afford a 45-day treatment at a private residential clinic – which costs between $3,500 and $16,000 – the families who arrive at Love Life have fewer options. The city government subsidizes treatment there, which lasts anywhere from 15 days to nine months, depending on court orders.

An untold number of “annexes” – informal, unregulated treatment centers – popped up in Mexico in the past decade as the problem grew beyond the state’s ability to handle it. These centers, run without licenses or oversight, are known to use physical and psychological violence during treatment and until recently, when the federal government began to wake up to the problem, were among the few options for people with limited funds. 

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These, as well as many formal treatment centers, have historically been geared toward treating men, and have not kept pace with the growth in female drug and alcohol abuse, leaving women with few treatment options.

Faced with the increasing drug use and hoping to dampen the fallout of a bloody drug war, the federal government began betting on prevention and rehabilitation in 2007. The addictions survey, funded and executed by the health ministry, concludes that prevention and education campaigns – including the opening of more than 300 government-run “New Life” treatment centers across the country – helped stem the growth in drug abuse from 2008 to 2011. The New Life centers focus on prevention and early interventions.

Border region troubles

Mexico’s north has the country's highest rate of drug abuse, at 2.3 percent, according to the addictions survey, and its levels of heroin and methamphetamine use are also the highest in the country. Heroin production by Mexican criminal organizations tripled between 2004 and 2012, according to the Global Commission on Drug Policy, and some of what’s headed for the US market inevitably gets left behind in northern Mexico.

In northern Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, and Coahuila – all states bordering the US – “there is more heroin consumption because it can be found cheaper,” says Salvador Canovas Stone, director of therapy at Mexico City’s private Clinica Ajusco. Mr. Stone notes that a dose costing $32 in Mexico City goes for just $4 up north, close to the US border.

Substance abuse may have recently held steady, as the addictions study shows, but numbers aren’t going down – and likely won't, unless Mexico's drug trafficking organizations cede their role as suppliers.

As Mr. Canovas says, “the problem is still there.”

Mexican Court Frees Woman Imprisoned in Kidnapping

MEXICO CITY — A Supreme Court panel in Mexico voted Wednesday to free a French woman serving a 60-year sentence for kidnapping, ending a case that has become emblematic of problems in the country’s opaque justice system and that has strained relations with France.

In voting 3-2 to free the woman, Florence Cassez, 38, the magistrates did not address whether she was guilty or innocent. What was clear, they said, was that her rights had been violated by a televised broadcast of what appeared to be her arrest and the liberation of three kidnapping victims at a ranch outside Mexico City in December 2005.

Authorities later acknowledged that the raid was staged, and that Ms. Cassez and her boyfriend at the time, Israel Vallarta, had been arrested the day before on a highway. They were held while the police set up the supposed raid, which was broadcast on national television.

Three kidnapping victims testified against her. But their testimony was inconsistent and two of them did not identify her at first.

She was released Wednesday night and left the country on a late-night flight for Paris, according to The Associated Press. Ms. Cassez’s plight had been portrayed by the French news media as the tale of an innocent woman imprisoned in a corrupt legal system.

Visiting French cabinet ministers came to see her in her cell. Carla Bruni, the former first lady of France, and Valérie Trierweiler, the partner of President François Hollande, sent gifts.

After the ruling, Mr. Hollande, in a televised statement, said, “Today we can say that between France and Mexico we have the best relations that can be established,” Reuters reported.

President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico said he would respect the Supreme Court’s decision. Mr. Vallarta’s case is still being decided in the courts, according to local news media reports. The episode set off an impassioned debate in Mexico. Reflecting widespread desperation over the authorities’ frequent failure to investigate crimes fully, victims’ rights groups argued that the testimony that convicted Ms. Cassez could not just be thrown out.

“Should a failure in the form leave aside the substance: if a person is guilty or not?” Maria Elena Morera, a respected anticrime activist, wrote in the site Animal Politico this week.

But scholars and civil rights groups said that the case represented the problems with a judicial system where witness testimony, often coerced, frequently substitutes for physical evidence and adequate investigation.

“Today anybody can be the victim of a process that is plagued by bad practices from the start,” Federico Reyes Heroles, an author, wrote in the newspaper Reforma.

After the Supreme Court’s decision, Miguel Carbonell, a constitutional lawyer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, wrote on Twitter: “One thing is clear to everybody: the Mexican judicial system urgently needs improvement.”

In Desert Outposts, Border Agents Keep Watch

ALONG THE MEXICO-NEW MEXICO BORDER — A white pickup truck rumbled along the barbed-wire fence that divides the United States and Mexico, toward a crude gate nicknamed Mingas, carved by drug smugglers to bring their loads across the border.

On American soil, Daniel Algarate Martínez, a Border Patrol agent, gripped his rifle, staring at the truck that approached on the other side of the divide. A coyote howled in the distance. The truck, loaded with logs, raced past him, past Mingas, and kept on going.

“I wonder what he has under that wood,” Agent Algarate Martínez mumbled.

The path to the Mingas gate is a circuitous and sorry dirt trail of unpredictable dangers brought by the desert, the remoteness and the illicit drug trade. It is on the eastern edge of the Bootheel in New Mexico’s southwest corner, in Hidalgo County, where the border juts down and Mexico stands briefly to America’s east, one of the most remote spots in the roughly 2,000 miles where the countries meet.

The closest Border Patrol station is about 60 miles away, an eternity in a region where most roads were cut by ranchers’ tractors and cattle hooves. The closest agents are much closer these days, though, stationed for days in outposts deep in the Chihuahuan desert, so close to Mexico that the lights of its farms are the often the only noticeable sign of human life.

The agents sleep in bunk beds, sharing meals in a communal kitchen next to lounges where TV sets are tuned to ESPN. Water comes from wells. Diesel tanks hold fuel for the vehicles. Dormitories, command centers and holding cells occupy modular buildings encircled by floodlights and chain-link fences, a setup modeled after the military’s forward operating bases in Afghanistan.

Ramiro E. Cordero, a special operations supervisor for the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which is responsible for 268 miles of borderland, including the Bootheel, said the bases were an essential element in the agency’s quasi-military strategy of “gaining, maintaining and expanding.” They provide a presence in isolated areas where building brick-and-mortar stations would have been impractical.

There are two of them in New Mexico, on the eastern and western flanks of the Bootheel. Camp Ramsey, where Agent Algarate Martínez is sometimes stationed, opened in 2009. Camp Garza opened in November — the ripple effect of a rancher’s killing in Arizona, most likely by a drug smuggler.

Though the number of apprehensions of illegal border crossers has continued its steady decline, the number of drug seizures has remained constant all along the American Southwest, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, justifying the Border Patrol’s expansion into such remote areas. Arizona already has five such forward-operating bases, with three more to open this year.

In the El Paso sector, the number of detained illegal immigrants fell to roughly 10,400 last year from 122,000 in 2006. Agent Cordero said that half of them were captured in the Bootheel region, where, unless a migrant got lost while trying to sneak into the United States through Arizona, those who get caught are likely to be carrying bundles of marijuana.

Dispassionately, Agent Algarate Martínez, 37, who is from Zaragoza, Spain, said, “This is dope country.”

There are four to six agents assigned to each shift at Camp Ramsey: morning, swing and midnight. They each stay there for five days and five nights, and they each patrol alone, looking for signs of people where people are not expected to be. It seems like an exercise in futility — agents scanning the rocky, dusty ground for human footprints amid the footprints of cows, bobcats, wild pigs and mountain lions from inside their Ford Raptors, but mostly by foot.

Agent Algarate Martínez drove to Mingas to check on sensors that had been tripped in sequence, following the type of northward pattern typically traveled by smugglers. He found no one and figured it must have been a false alarm, which is not uncommon.

Dinner at Camp Ramsey that night was burgers cooked on the grill by an agent; he dropped a plate of them on the communal table, and then shuffled to his bed to catch some sleep before his shift began at midnight.