The United States of Mexico

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views March 10, 2003]

In "Rising Costs of Tolerating Illegal Aliens," (Feb. 2003), the Eagle Forum's Phyllis Schlafly tells of Mexicans who have learned that they can obtain free medical treatment across the border in American hospitals, in Arizona, New Mexico, California and Texas. The costs of this care are paid by the taxpayers of those states, while Americans without health insurance struggle to meet their medical bills.

Something called the "Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act," which mandates that U.S. hospitals with emergency services must treat anyone who shows up--including illegal aliens--was passed by Congress in 1986.

Schlafly writes:

We are not just talking about Mexicans who may have had an accident close to the border. We are talking about Mexicans with serious health problems who are deliberately sent to the United States after Mexican hospitals discover they can't pay for services and have no insurance. A study made by the U.S.-Mexico Border Counties Coalition, an American lobbying group, found that U.S. hospitals in border states provide at least $200 million a year in uncompensated emergency care to illegal aliens. In the four border states, 77 hospitals now face a medical emergency. Uncompensated care to illegal aliens in Arizona cost the Cochise County Health Department 30% of its annual budget, the Copper Queen Hospital in Bisbee $200,000 out of a net operating income of $300,000, the University Medical Center in Tucson $10 million, and the Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Tucson $1 million in only the first quarter of last year. The Southeast Arizona Medical Center in Douglas is on the verge of bankruptcy. Some emergency rooms and pre-natal units have closed because they can't afford to stay open.

Arizona hospitals have offered donated medical equipment and ambulances to Mexican medical facilities, but Mexican customs officials have not permitted much of it to enter Mexico. They apparently prefer to send their sick to U.S. hospitals rather than care for them in Mexico. Other costs of dumping Mexicans on U.S. hospitals include transporting the seriously ill by helicopter from small border hospitals to Tucson or Phoenix. This cost ranges from $7,000 to $20,000 a trip. During the last three years, Houston's Harris County Hospital District spent $330 million to treat and immunize illegal aliens, an amount estimated to be at least 20% of the indigent caseload.

In California, where the state budget crunch is forcing reductions in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, observers warn of an approaching catastrophe in the health-care system. Almost one in five Californians lacks health insurance, yet the law requires hospitals to continue to serve illegal aliens free.

In "Mexico's Northern Strategy," New York attorney Howard Sutherland describes President Vicente Fox's five-year plan to further "Mexicanize" the United States. In effect, the sheer weight of bodies will colonize the American territory. Sutherland cites a policy paper published by Fox's administration:

The Fox plan goes on to posit immigration to the United States as a human right: the issue of "migration, especially in the United States, needs a new focus over the long term to permit the movement and residence of Mexican nationals to be safe, comfortable, legal and orderly, and the attitude of police persecution of this phenomenon must be abandoned and it must be perceived as a labor and social phenomenon." In Fox's view, therefore, the United States has no right to preserve itself as a distinct nation. Americans must pay for the health, welfare, and education of all Mexicans who move in while accepting that Mexico will be active in our country reinforcing its emigrants' mexicanismo.

Bidding for the loyalty of all Mexicans up north--including Mexican-Americans--Fox set up a Presidential Council for Mexicans Abroad. To run it, he picked UT-Dallas professor Juan Hernandez. Unconcerned--for good reason--that his new job might jeopardize his U.S. citizenship (he holds dual nationality), Hernandez lobbied aggressively in the United States. On ABC's Nightline he said that Mexicans in the United States need to become more politically active, "like Jews and Puerto Ricans." Making no distinction between Mexican-Americans and Mexican resident aliens, nor between illegal aliens and legal residents, Hernandez threw down the gauntlet: "I want the third generation, the seventh generation, I want them all to think 'Mexico first.'"

Sutherland points out that the Mexican government continues to condemn American failure to open its southern border completely, and has taken its case for open borders to international agencies. Using "human rights" as a lever, the Mexican Senate recently presented a formal complaint to the United Nations, apparently contemptuous of this country's sovereign right to conduct its immigration policies as it sees fit. The Mexican crusade is designed, says Sutherland, "to make enforcement of U.S. immigration laws a violation of international law." Last November, Jorge Casteneda, a former government minister, publicly proclaimed, "I like very much the metaphor of Gulliver, of ensnarling the giant. Tying it up, with nails, with thread, with 20,000 nets that bog it down: these nets being norms, principles, resolutions, agreements, and bilateral, regional and international covenants."

Sutherland considers today's U.S.-Mexico relationship debilitating for both countries, and correctly observes:

Mexico has become a parasite nation, so dependent on America that its rulers fight to send their people north to work as peons and become public charges. Its unhealthy dependence drains Mexico of able-bodied people while allowing the country's oligarchs to avoid genuine reform. They ease their humiliations by attempting a cultural conquest of the despised gringo superpower. America, hobbled by multiculturalism, is largely inert in the face of the Mexican demographic challenge. Conditioned by the media, politicians, and a failed education system to see America as no more than a nation of immigrants, how can Americans object to more immigrants?

Although the terrorist attacks of 2001 have slowed down some proposed U.S. policies favorable to Mexican immigration, Mexican officials appear certain that eventually all of their demands will be met. They've got plenty of time to wait as craven U.S. businesses, local governments, and labor unions go to bat in their behalf, in order to assure the continual stream of labor.

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