Maíz, Corn, and Immigration

I was talking to friend awhile back and he asked me about immigration. His question was along the lines of why people from Mexico come to the states looking for work, as opposed to staying in their own country and finding a job. Let me answer that as best I can. In Mexico, Maria needs to buy corn to grind into masa to make tortillas and any other number of incredible Mexican culinary delights. Increasingly over the last few years, the cost of buying that corn locally has climbed. It has not climbed because the growers are making more money, it has climbed because the raw costs associated with corn growing, things like water, seed, and fertilizer have all gone up. Now what is interesting in this is that the cost of buying corn in Mexico that is grown in the United States has actually gone down. Now the savvy folks out there are probably saying “Well of course Dave, we are more productive growers up here.” And you know what, we may be. But that is only half of the reason. The other half has to do with the fact that the US government subsidizes US corn growers, guaranteeing a non level playing field between us, and the Mexican farmer. In essence, what we do for our corn farmers is this. We guarantee them a stable price for their corn, and even sometimes pay them to not farm, just so we can manipulate the price of corn. There is no free market in the US corn industry. Because of this, international corn dealers can dump cheap US corn on the Mexican market, essentially creaming the local village farmer. So what does Juan do if he cannot farm corn profitably on his ancestral land anymore? He comes to the US to seek work in beef and chicken slaughterhouses where the animals we stuff full of good old US feed corn are processed. As I talked with my friend, he began to see why this was a problem. And then he asked me why Mexico just didn’t support and protect the price of corn in their country like the US does. Interesting isn’t it? Instead of becoming indignant that the US government is subsidizing prices in a supposed free market system, my friend asks why Mexico doesn’t do the same thing our government is doing. Do you know what the answer is? It is because when the Mexican government tried to impose tariffs on the importation of cheap US corn [syrup] to protect their sugar cane growers, we took them to court, charging illegal trade practices. To quote Sidney Weintraub, a political economist with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC., “The Mexicans never had a chance because their argument was based on fair play, and the US [argument was] on law." Now the sugar industry in Mexico is struggling to stay afloat, sending even more potential immigrants towards el norte looking for work. I wonder why Mexico just can’t get this system fixed.