The Foreign Service Journal, October 2007

While all these entities, and many others, facilitate the movement of goods and services from portal to por- tal, they are also restrictive, controlling the flows and monitoring passages. These virtual borders offer the model we seek for our geographic ones: membranes that screen the dangerous from the desired, and a gov- erning paradigm whose job is to preserve the mem- brane. Whether we think of trade, migration or security, we tend to think geographically, especially after Sept. 11, 2001. The United States shares a 7,500-mile land and air border with Canada and Mexico. The many ports of entry along those borders seem more vulnerable because the numbers of people and vehicles that flow through them daily are already unimaginable. But this flow is essential to all three countries’ employment, production and commerce. According to the Migration Policy Institute, both Mexico and Canada send at least 85 per- cent of their exports to the United States. The U.S. sends more of its exports to Canada than anywhere else, and Mexico is in third place for U.S. exports. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, since the North American Free Trade Agreement between the three countries came into effect in 1994, two-way trade between Canada and Mexico has tripled. On an average day, nearly one million people cross legally through U.S.-Mexico ports of entry in both direc- tions. In 2005, five million trucks, 91 million cars and 730,000 railroad cars crossed that same border. While many people first think that the 11.2 million people living along the border must be the primary destination for all this activity, trade figures show the impact is broader. According to the Woodrow Wilson Center, 22 U.S. states count on Mexico as either the primary or secondary des- tination for their exports. The border grows wider as trade relationships and population flows deepen. Nearly 200,000 Mexicans migrate to the United States legally every year, according to the Pew Hispanic Foundation. For obvious reasons, it is harder to pin down figures on “illegal” (i.e., unauthorized) border crossings by Mexicans, which vary seasonally and respond to changes in both countries’ economies, as well as to U.S. border enforcement measures. And, of course, some Mexicans who enter with valid non-immigrant visas overstay them. Taken together, the Pew Hispanic Foundation’s figures for 2006 show that Mexican migra- tion to the U.S. between 1995 and 2005 averaged around 400,000 people per year. According to Department of Homeland Security statistics, this is out of a total of 4.8 million visitors (in 2005) admitted with non-immigrant visas annually. While Mexican migration was once concentrated in a few states, migrants are now settling in new ones (e.g., New York, Georgia, North Carolina) in increasing num- bers. One sign of this is that Mexico now has 48 con- sulates in the U.S., the most recent one opening in Little Rock, Ark., earlier this year. Our own figures suggest that one million Americans reside in Mexico, while 12 million more visit every year. We see colonies of Americans settling in warm areas where the cost of living is low and access to the U.S. is easy. We also have a floating “snowbird” population that travels south in the winter, then moves back north for the summer. U.S. cross-border bilateral trade totals about $1 billion a day. Shared Concerns The challenge for all three nations has been to build across an immense physical expanse a membrane of technology, enforcement personnel and infrastructure that can expedite the flow of licit, mutually beneficial migration and trade while effectively impeding smug- gling, trafficking in persons, narcotrafficking and terror- ist threats. Mexico, too, seeks such a membrane. Its government shares the goal of having licit goods and travelers move freely across the border while sharing U.S. concerns about drugs, contraband, third-country nationals and possible terrorists moving through its territory into the United States. Inevitably, Mexico must confront — and already faces — the risks if those illicit products and criminal elements, unable to penetrate the U.S., settle into Mexico and look for markets or targets there. Violence, drug use, money-laundering and related crimes are already growing challenges for Mexico. It is also vocal about the southward flow of arms and cash from the United States into its territory, enabling orga- nized crime gangs to outgun local law enforcement and use the country as a base of operations. As the other partner in this dynamic, Canada shares the same vision: trade, people and information flowing F O C U S 14 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 Leslie Bassett is deputy chief of mission in Mexico City.