I'm not anti-immigration. I am anti-uncontrolled immigration. And I am pro-assimilation. America is a nation based on ideas and not on blood or sacred soil. We are still America as long as whoever lives here believes in our ideals.
Mexico's birth rate is going down and that may solve the uncontrolled immigration problem from there all on its own (although Central Americans could still flow through Mexico, I suppose--unless they stay in Mexico).
And Mexico is taking a step that could make Mexico more prosperous to complement that demographic changes that slow emigration to America. Mexico will open their oil industry to foreign investment and control:
Most Americans have an image of Mexico as a nation convulsed by violent drug wars and enervated by the exodus of hundreds of thousands of desperate immigrants across our southern border.
That image is out of date. The drug war has largely quieted down and scarcely affects most of the country, and, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, net migration from Mexico to the United States since 2007 has fallen to zero.
What has been happening in Mexico recently is far more encouraging. It is the culmination of reforms that have been in train, but have been frustratingly delayed, for the last 25 years. ...
Pemex’s Cantarell oilfield in the Gulf is sputtering, and it lacks the expertise and capital to tap Mexico’s plentiful shale oil and gas reserves. But the idea that “the people” own Mexico’s oil still has wide appeal, and the PRD split from the coalition and opposed change.
It passed with PRI and PAN support in December. Now foreign oil firms will be able to invest and book Mexican resources as reserves, stimulating growth and job creation.
Tip to Instapundit.
Anti-American nationalism has often focused on the oil industry as a national resource that could not be allowed to be dominated by America. It has taken this long for the passions unleashed in early 20th century revolution to finally die down. That passion isn't gone, mind you. Nor are the politicians whose policies depend on at least a pro forma acceptance of the logic of those passions gone.
Until recently, I was more worried about corruption, drug cartels, and poverty turning Mexico into a foreign policy problem right on our border.
But with other reforms, Mexico could take off and join America and Canada as a bloc of advanced countries. I guess you can debate NAFTA's impact on pushing this trend. But you can at least say that NAFTA didn't stop it.
