Make Mexico the 51th state! Good idea?

Mephisto said:
The Mexicans already HAVE a Democracy, what they want is better wages (and they may end up illegally immigrating to Canada if they don't raise minimum wage here). Frankly, I don't think they'd go along with your plan - see, the world doesn't like Americans as much as it used to. Mexicans don't have to worry about being taken hostage when they fly. ;)

I like Bill Mahr's solution better: Make a Wal-Mart the entire length of the southern border. Americans can go through the front to to shop, Mexicans can come in the back door to work.

Making Mexico the 51st state is like buying a used car. You'll end up with all sorts of problems you didn't consider before.

P.S. I've heard a lot of politicians lately blaming the illegal immigrants for lowering wages in the U.S. They're not in control of minimum wage, Congress is - THEY'RE the ones responsible for keeping wages in America low.
Click to expand...
Minimum wage is partly responsible for the illegal immigrant influx. It creates an underground market for people willing to work for less than minimum and have nothing to lose by doing so. When we do decide to do something about illegal aliens, it is usually sugar coated with a blanket amnesty, again, nothing to lose. If they lose something, it is usually deportation and they find a way to get through the revolving door again. I can't blame the illegals, either because they are just trying to better their own situation. I would probably do the same in their shoes.

Remove artificial minimum wage restrictions and let the market drive wages and prices and beef up the border with National Guard backing up he border patrol. Make immigration procedures something that can be accomplished reasonably. The process is cumbersome and expensive, especially for poor people who barely speak the language.
 
brodski said:
All the economic data and analysis I have seen contradicts your observation. Did you engage in any economic studies whilst you lived in Germany or are you just posting from your "gut feeling"?
eastern Germany scores much higher (worse) on the indices of deprivation than western Germany, and that's leaving aside the shock to the German economy which reunification caused, and which Germany has not yet fully recovered from.
Click to expand...



I LIVED in both what was formerly east and west germany over 10 years after the reunification. From my prespective I saw no economic differences between former east and west germany. I could not even tell the difference.
 
peptoabysmal said:
Minimum wage is partly responsible for the illegal immigrant influx. It creates an underground market for people willing to work for less than minimum and have nothing to lose by doing so. When we do decide to do something about illegal aliens, it is usually sugar coated with a blanket amnesty, again, nothing to lose. If they lose something, it is usually deportation and they find a way to get through the revolving door again. I can't blame the illegals, either because they are just trying to better their own situation. I would probably do the same in their shoes.

Remove artificial minimum wage restrictions and let the market drive wages and prices and beef up the border with National Guard backing up he border patrol. Make immigration procedures something that can be accomplished reasonably. The process is cumbersome and expensive, especially for poor people who barely speak the language.
Click to expand...



Are you saying having no minimum wage would be a good idea?
 
Dustin said:
I LIVED in both what was formerly east and west germany over 10 years after the reunification. From my prespective I saw no economic differences between former east and west germany. I could not even tell the difference.
Click to expand...

With such keen powers of social observation maybe you're not the best person to dream up extreme solutions for this kind of problems...
 
Megalodon said:
With such keen powers of social observation maybe you're not the best person to dream up extreme solutions for this kind of problems...
Click to expand...


If you're going to be a sarcastic smart ass don't post in my thread.


The fact of the matter is..If someone like myself can't even see the differences between east/west germany 15 years later then I don't see how American taking in Mexico would be any different 15-20 years from now where America is hundreds of times stronger economically than germany was during the reunification.
 
Dustin said:
I LIVED in both what was formerly east and west germany over 10 years after the reunification. From my prespective I saw no economic differences between former east and west germany. I could not even tell the difference.
Click to expand...
Perhaps you could offer a little more evidence than your opinion on these matters. Maybe you could refute some of the economic analysis offered in the article linked to earlier. Typing in caps doesn't make your argument any more convincing.
 
Dustin said:
If you're going to be a sarcastic smart ass don't post in my thread.


The fact of the matter is..If someone like myself can't even see the differences between east/west germany 15 years later then I don't see how American taking in Mexico would be any different 15-20 years from now where America is hundreds of times stronger economically than germany was during the reunification.
Click to expand...


Not being sarcastic... I'm living in Germany right now, and if you bother to both talk to the people and read the numbers, you realize that there is still a huge gap between East and West. If you didn't notice it, then my previous comment fits like a glove.

Then of course is the small matter of the high probability that most mexicans are actually proud of being mexicans, and do not wish to be an american state, but who cares anyhow....
 
Dustin
The difference I see is that once upon a time Berlin was one place, not divided. Part of the US was under the control of various Mexican rulers- going back 600-700 years. So under that thought it would be easier for Mexico to absorb the US than vice versa.
I would like for you to share your definition of democracy. It is an idea, not an exact formula. Several countries have what they call a democracy, but what some Americans would not call a democracy.
 
Dustin said:
The fact of the matter is..If someone like myself can't even see the differences between east/west germany 15 years later then I don't see how American taking in Mexico would be any different 15-20 years from now where America is hundreds of times stronger economically than germany was during the reunification.
Click to expand...
Here's some economic analysis of east and west Germany from roughly the time you where living there (10 years after reunification)
http://www.ce-review.org/01/5/seliger5.html
The unemployment rate overall in former east Germany was on average double that of the former west, and up to three time that rate in some parts of the north east.
there had been some convergence, but it was no where near as fast as people had hopes and it has cost the west "more than 1800 billion Deutschmarks".
Also remember, there was a huge appetite for thin in Germany, a sense of joining together a nation which had been separated, and (Even though Germany was barely 70 years old when it was divided), there was a sense of common history and most importantly a common language. I think integrating Mexico into the US would prove just a little more problematic, especially as the German government was (is) much more prepared to spend money on social and economic projects to try and ease the process of unification than the US government would be.
 
brodski said:
Here's some economic analysis of east and west Germany from roughly the time you where living there (10 years after reunification)
http://www.ce-review.org/01/5/seliger5.html
The unemployment rate overall in former east Germany was on average double that of the former west, and up to three time that rate in some parts of the north east.
there had been some convergence, but it was no where near as fast as people had hopes and it has cost the west "more than 1800 billion Deutschmarks".
Also remember, there was a huge appetite for thin in Germany, a sense of joining together a nation which had been separated, and (Even though Germany was barely 70 years old when it was divided), there was a sense of common history and most importantly a common language. I think integrating Mexico into the US would prove just a little more problematic, especially as the German government was (is) much more prepared to spend money on social and economic projects to try and ease the process of unification than the US government would be.
Click to expand...



Aren't these statistics from BEFORE the reunification?


Are you saying TODAY the current unemployment rate in east germany is double that in west germany?
 
wunky said:
Dustin
The difference I see is that once upon a time Berlin was one place, not divided. Part of the US was under the control of various Mexican rulers- going back 600-700 years. So under that thought it would be easier for Mexico to absorb the US than vice versa.
I would like for you to share your definition of democracy. It is an idea, not an exact formula. Several countries have what they call a democracy, but what some Americans would not call a democracy.
Click to expand...



That would defeat the whole purpose. Mexico is a wreck economically and it absorbing America wouldn't make any sense at all.
 
Dustin said:
Aren't these statistics from BEFORE the reunification?


Are you saying TODAY the current unemployment rate in east germany is double that in west germany?
Click to expand...
No those where the rates in 2000/2001, roughly the time that you where living in Germany (10 years after reunification).
The figures I quoted where from the text of the article I linked too, also check out the table in the link , that provides many comparative economic measures for east and west Germany for 1991, 1995 and 1999. each of the figures should be compared to a West German baseline of 100, for instance in 1999 unemployment in the former eat Germany as "225", that is 2.25 times higher than unemployment in the west.
Back in 1991 unemployment was only 2.07 times higher in the east than the west. I should point out however that unemployment was and is not evenly spread across east Germany, there are some areas which are almost as prosperous as some areas of west Germany, so you may very well not have noticed a difference, depending on which areas you lived in.
However overall there is a very real and very serious difference, even after 10 years.
The current situation (ok a year out of date) is summed up nicely here.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4225346.stm
 
Dustin said:
I thought that this would be a great and novel idea. Get rid of the Government of Mexico and make it a 51th state. Get rid of the borders and allow anyone to go there or come here.

First we would need to put out a vote to all of the Mexican people. Decide wether they want to become the 51th state or not. If they vote No,Then we seal the border and be done with it.

If they DO then we get rid of the Govt of Mexico and establish it as a 51th state.

I equate it to allowing circulation back to a finger after it has been cut off by a rubber band. Once we establish Mexico as a 51th state and establish our govt there then you'd see a massive influx of money in and out of mexico thus building it's basic infostructure up to that of normal American infostructure. Like circulation returning back to a limb.

I imagine the west coast of Mexico would be alot like Clifornia and the middle of it alot like nevada or arizona. The southern parts alot like Florida. As far as infostructure goes.

I highly doubt the Mexican people or the Govt itself would challenge such a thing given a few years of preperation and what not.

I also think it would be ALOT easier to prevent terrorists from coming in since the link between mexico and south america is ALOT THINNER than the link between Mexico and America. We could EASILY maintain the border there since it's about 1/30th the size of the border between America and Mexico.



I have tried finding problems with this idea but I can't seem to find any. What are the potential problems with doing something like this? I post this here to get any opinions on it.
Click to expand...

Well, I can easily think of several problems with this idea.

We still have several serious issues to deal with in Afghanistan.
We still have many, many very serious issues to deal with in Iraq.
We are running a huge federal deficit.
Providing all of Mexico with Federal Highways, Federally funded schools, communications, military protection, Customs and Border controls, would be very difficult due to the language and distance barriers.
And on and on and on.

However, before even discussing such things, I think that it would be better to ask Mexicans about it.

After all, Puerto Rico has had at least three different chances to become the 51st State and they decided "NO". And if a place like Puerto Rico says "NO", then I expect that at the very least one should ask Mexico what they think of the idea before proceeding.
 
Crossbow said:
Well, I can easily think of several problems with this idea.

We still have several serious issues to deal with in Afghanistan.
We still have many, many very serious issues to deal with in Iraq.
We are running a huge federal deficit.
Providing all of Mexico with Federal Highways, Federally funded schools, communications, military protection, Customs and Border controls, would be very difficult due to the language and distance barriers.
And on and on and on.

However, before even discussing such things, I think that it would be better to ask Mexicans about it.

After all, Puerto Rico has had at least three different chances to become the 51st State and they decided "NO". And if a place like Puerto Rico says "NO", then I expect that at the very least one should ask Mexico what they think of the idea before proceeding.
Click to expand...

In all fairness, the OP did state that the Mexican people would vote on whether this "plan" would come to pass. It wasn't an annexation by force being proposed, but an assumtion that the Mexicans really would prefer to be "Americans".
 
ZirconBlue said:
In all fairness, the OP did state that the Mexican people would vote on whether this "plan" would come to pass. It wasn't an annexation by force being proposed, but an assumtion that the Mexicans really would prefer to be "Americans".
Click to expand...

Well that is true enough.

However, if you look at the several subsequent posts by Dustin you will see Mexicans referred to as:
poor,
corrupt,
a source of terrorists,
and so on.

He also makes some rather outlandish proposals regarding the nation of Mexico such as abolishing there states.

He also states that if Mexico does not pass the referendum, then all Mexicans in the USA would be driven out.

Sorry ZirconBlue, but I still find Dustin's proposal to be extremely unworkable regardless of the amount of lipstick that he puts on his pig.
 
I don´t know how anyone could take Dustin seriously. His remarks are really based on ignorance. It does not surprise me though, a great majority of the US population know very little about Mexican policy, culture and history. Well, they know very little about the rest of the world...

His claim that the goverment and Mexicans would like to join the US is absolutely rubbish. THe immigration to the US is just driven by money, by jobs, by unequal distribution. As a Mexican I can say that we find the "american way of life" empty of any meaning (except consumerism), our moral values couldn´t be more different, the US experiences a social decomposition that would spread like a virus.

Yes, Mexico suffers corruption, violence but there are some other aspects that we value more. For many years, we have mantained a foreign policy of absolute respect for the sovereignty of other nations and joining a government like the US would infringe things like that.
 
Renfield said:
Theoretically its a democracy.
Click to expand...

Theoretically America is one too.

I can't believe you seriously have people suggesting to combine America and Mexico. I think Americans have already crossed the line of insanity by allowing illegal immigrants to protest on their streets without taking up arms. Thankyou international socialists!
 
blakehaydn said:
Theoretically America is one too.

I can't believe you seriously have people suggesting to combine America and Mexico. I think Americans have already crossed the line of insanity by allowing illegal immigrants to protest on their streets without taking up arms. Thankyou international socialists!
Click to expand...

So can I infer from your post that you think that peacefull protesters should be shot on the grounds that they are "illegal"? Despite the fact that they are only there because there is a huge demand for their cheap labor?
 
Crossbow said:
Well that is true enough.

However, if you look at the several subsequent posts by Dustin you will see Mexicans referred to as:
poor,
corrupt,
a source of terrorists,
and so on.

He also makes some rather outlandish proposals regarding the nation of Mexico such as abolishing there states.

He also states that if Mexico does not pass the referendum, then all Mexicans in the USA would be driven out.

Sorry ZirconBlue, but I still find Dustin's proposal to be extremely unworkable regardless of the amount of lipstick that he puts on his pig.
Click to expand...

For clarification, I don't disagree with anything you've said in this post.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom