The Foreign Service Journal, April 2006

system of government in the hemisphere. (The sole hold- out was Cuba, which dismisses electoral democracy as a “multiparty farce.”) Before the ceremony in Lima, Powell was conferring on trade issues with Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo when he received word that terrorist attacks had taken place at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He knew instantly that the world would never be the same. After attending the signing ceremony in Lima and accepting condolences from his diplomatic col- leagues, he departed hastily on the long flight to Washington. As his plane headed north, Powell left Latin America in more ways than one. The region quickly receded as a priority issue for the administration. There was too much to do on other fronts. The war on terrorism also meant that an administra- tion plan to reach an immigration agreement with Mexico fell off the radar screen. Instead, at U.S. insis- tence, enhancing border security came to dominate the bilateral agenda. President Bush has tried to revive immigration reform, calling for steps that would legalize some of the five mil- lion Mexican aliens on U.S. soil. But he has run into strong congressional opposition; on Dec. 16, 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a plan to build hundreds of miles of border walls to keep illegal migrants out. Many Mexicans were outraged. One sometimes-overlooked feature of U.S. Mexican relations is the degree to which Mexicans living in the United States help family members back home — sending an estimated $20 billion back across the border in 2005. For Latin America as whole, the remittance figure for all migrants, both legal and illegal, was $30 billion that year, according to Don Terry of the Inter- American Development Bank. Terry calls remittances a key to “financial democracy” in Latin America, but that thesis is disputed by Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates strong measures against illegal migrants. Stein says it’s “highly questionable” whether the remittances sent to F O C U S A P R I L 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 25