Bringing Mexico to Its Knees Will Not 'Make America Great Again' Laura Carlsen - CounterPunch
go to original January 20, 2017

Anti Trump Protest in NYC with Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin and Robert DeNiro  (cason jamnx)

Tens of thousands of people protesting in the streets, marches and roadblocks snarling transit across the country, looting of supermarkets and plummeting currency. That’s a snapshot of Mexico today.

Not all the current chaos can be attributed to the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. But a lot of it can. Trump used Mexico as a punching bag to show off his muscle. Not since the Cold War has a foreign nation been singled out as the cause of so many domestic woes–real and perceived.

The wall between Mexico and the United States symbolized the central narrative of a campaign that was openly racist and xenophobic in a way that most people thought was beyond the realm of acceptable politics.

It went like this: ‘We, the real Americans, are being pushed around, humiliated and robbed by immigrants. They come from abroad, and they hide within our borders. They are the cause of unemployment, wage stagnation, dwindling public resources and the loss of American identity and greatness.’

Mexicans took the brunt. Never mind that Mexicans are less than half of unauthorized immigrants in the country, or that net migration is negative—more Mexicans leave the U.S. than arrive. Not only were Mexican immigrants portrayed as a security hazard and job-stealers, Mexicans who stayed in Mexico were also the villains, as the supposed benefactors of the 1992 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The reality is that undocumented migrants pay nearly $12 billion in taxes into public coffers–much more than they take out. But this is post-facts politics. Trump’s world divides into winners and losers, and somehow, bizarrely, Mexico was portrayed as the winner and the U.S. the loser and something had to be done about that.

“Build the Wall!” rose as a battle cry at Trump rallies across the country.

Trump’s punish-Mexico proposals are unprecedented: build a wall the entire length of the U.S. southern border; prevent or tax remittances to force Mexico to pay for the wall; deport the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, among them some 5 million Mexicans; slap a 35% tariff on products made in Mexico and sold in the U.S.; increase aerial surveillance and triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on the southern border; imprison immigrants through the use of private detention centers; eliminate President Obama’s DACA program that allows students brought to the country as children to remain with renewable visas; end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented workers; expand e-verify and employer sanctions; and renegotiate NAFTA with the threat of withdrawing altogether.

These measures, even if only partially implemented, would have a devastating and almost immediate effect on Mexico.

Read the rest at Axis of Logic

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Related: Mexico vs. Trump: Mexico Needs to Respond to Threats with Reason and Passion (Mexico Voices)

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