NAFTA was supposed to lift Mexico out of third world status, but clueless Mexicans — unclear on the concept of entrepreneurship — did not take advantage of the opportunity by sensibly investing profits to improve their businesses, and instead paid themselves fat salaries. Then China came on strong and took away much of the manufacturing Mexicans thought they owned [Poverty, job issues heat up the presidential race in Mexico, San Francisco Chronicle, 6/18/06].

Some experts say Mexico’s failure to compete against China is largely the fault of local business owners who failed to take advantage of NAFTA, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.

After trade with the United States boomed in the mid-to-late 1990s, many entrepreneurs spent their profits by adopting luxury lifestyles rather than investing in technology, said Pedro Lopez de Alba, director of the Guanajuato state Science and Technology Council. [...]

What’s missing is a “real entrepreneurial culture,” said Lopez de Alba. “The Mexican entrepreneur waits for the government and puts his hand out. There needs to be a cultural change in companies. If we don’t change that mentality of business owners, we never will become a developed country.”

See? It’s a nation of Marxicans.

Following up on Patrick Cleborne’s item, “Do We Want To Import This (2),” , here’s an interesting perspective given to me by immigration reform leaders in Washington, D.C.

Based on off the record conversations between Congressional staffers and prominent immigration reform organizations, Congress is reluctant to enforce border security, sanction U.S. employers or take any other action to control illegal immigration because it is convinced that if it did, Mexico would face an increasingly restless society and see a huge drop off in its $15 billion in remittances.

Before long, Congress fears, Mexico would implode. Illegal immigration, so the Beltway thinking goes, would become worse than what we have today.

This theory actually has some credibility…but so what if it does?

Assuming we had secure borders and sanctioned greedy, unscrupulous employers illegal immigration would decrease, not increase.

Those that would have immigrated would stay in Mexico since there would be no easy or safe path to the US and no jobs waiting if they got here.

Then Mexico would have to deal with its own citizens instead of foisting them off on us.

And Mexico taking care of Mexicans is an essential component to immigration reform.

Peter Brimelow has a low opinion of the Teacher’s Union but I doubt that even he envisaged a Budapest-type situation, with militant teachers fighting the authorities for symbolic control of a city. Yet according the Mark in Mexico blog, this is exactly what just happened in Oaxaca, Mexico. (NB updates (1) and (2))

Mark in Mexico observes

“I think that Mexico, after all of the decades of suppression, dictators, corruption, murder, theft, failed revolutions, failed reform governments and , generally, all-around failure, is on the brink of explosion…this bloody confrontation which, as you can see, is far from over.”

(VDARE.com emphasis)

This is a comment which needs to be considered seriously, coming from the writer of the best essay on Mexico I have ever seen.

One might ask why a Google news search on Oaxaca indicates (at this time) that the story has been ignored by the US MSM - only alternative media have it.

With this going on next door, an effective border fence is imperative.