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

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

Third, and most important, the sample included key actors with hancls-on policymaking experience (see appendix). Thus, the question is not whether the opinions of these actors are typical of sending-state citizens but whether interview respondents could speak for themselves. We can assume that in off-the-record interviews they could do so, and that the interview data are therefore valid, if approximate, indicators of sending-state preferences and beliefs.

These findings thus make an important contribution to our knowledge of Caribbean Basin preferences for migration policy. The informants essentially saw emigration as a necessary evil: supplying needed short-term economic and social benefits but also imposing immediate human and cultural costs and hindering long-term development. While the interview subjects' specific ideas about the pros and cons of migration varied, almost all agreed that those costs and benefits depend on U.S. policy decisions, and for this reason migration was considered among the most important issues in relations with the United States. Interview respondents rarely called for more migration, however, but instead sought to legalize a higher proportion of existing flows, to strengthen immigrant rights, and to minimize deportations.

These data also raise at least two questions. First, why is it that these interview respondents seemed more concerned about U.S. migration policy-and more optimistic about their capacity to influence outcomes-than the existing literature would predict? Second, it is similarly puzzling that migration was universally recognized as a highly problematic regional issue, but that informants were also optimistic about their ability to influence U.S. migration policy, and considered migration policy to be subject to bilateral influence at least as much as trade policy.

While individual interview subjects may have been influenced by current events, especially the promising state of Mexico-U.S. negotiations at the time, a closer examination of the Mexican case suggests that the interview responses also reflect a more fundamental change in the regional migration regime. U.S. migration policymaking actually was overwhelmingly domestic during the 1970s and 1980s; this is reflected in the literature and in the interviewees' characterization of migration policy as highly problematic. But a number of factors have made migration policymaking, like other regional issues, increasingly intermestic since the 1990s (Domínguez and Fernândez de Castro 2001; de la Garza and Velasco 1997; Lowenthal 1999); and this change was a cause for optimism in the interview sample.

THE MEXICAN CASE

The emerging intermestic migration policymaking regime reflects four changes in the overall bilateral context and four responses to these changes by Mexican policymakers. A number of additional factors in the months before September 2001 especially enhanced opportunities for bilateral policymaking at that time.11

Changes in the Strategic Environment