Moving Beyond the Policy of No Policy: Emigration from Mexico and Central America

Latin American Politics and Society, Winter 2004 by Rosenblum, Marc R

These divergent perspectives are captured in figures 4 and 5, which depict respondents' views of most cooperative and most difficult bilateral issues. In figure 4, bilateral economics stand out as the most cooperative issues for the Mexicans interviewed, but these issues were least likely to be described as cooperative by Salvadorans in the sample. Conversely, respondents from El Salvador and Nicaragua rated migration as among the most cooperative issues (especially when controlling for one-time U.S. support for the peace processes). Mexicans were only half as likely as Central Americans to call immigration an area of cooperation. Despite these differences, however, all three groups of respondents agreed that immigration was the single most difficult issue in their relations with the United States (figure 5).

As figure 6 illustrates, Mexicans in the sample were also far more positive than Salvadorans and Nicaraguans about their country's ability to influence U.S. migration and trade policy. Indeed, Mexicans unanimously believed that their country influences U.S. immigration policy, at least under certain conditions. Also noteworthy, although immigration is viewed as difficult, is that respondents from all three countries were more positive about their country's capacity to influence U.S. immigration policy than U.S. trade policy.

Finally, in contrast to the other questions discussed above, variation by respondent type was observed in perceived influence over U.S. migration and trade policy (figure 7). Executive branch actors were consistently the most positive, nongovernmental actors the least positive. But more striking is that all three types of actors displayed similar patterns across the two issues, consistently rating migration as more prone to bilateral policymaking than trade. Indeed, even trade specialists were more likely to describe migration policymaking as bilateral than trade policymaking.9

Analysis and Summary

While this small, nonranclom sample prohibits quantitative hypothesis testing, three factors allow us to draw inferences about state preferences and beliefs based on these individual-level data. First, cross-national differences were consistent with what we know about variation in the nature of emigration flows. In particular, Nicaraguans placed greater emphasis than did Mexicans on the benefits of remittances, while Mexicans emphasized access to U.S. jobs. These differences are consistent with the higher skill levels and remittances associated with Nicaraguan migrants compared to Mexicans.10 Similarly, Mexico's high proportion of undocumented outflows and that country's long emigration history made Mexicans more likely to emphasize human rights than cultural issues as negative aspects of emigration; and Nicaraguan concerns displayed the opposite tendency as a result of that country's more recent and more often legal pattern of outflows.

second, conversely, the results failed to reveal substantial variation by respondent type on most of the interview questions, suggesting that the results were not unduly influenced by the sampling technique. For example, while immigration experts were slightly more likely than others to identify migration as the most difficult bilateral issue, a majority of non-migration experts in 2001 also rated migration as the most difficult bilateral issue.