The Cost of Good Relations between the U.S. and Mexico

Washington welcomed Mexican President Felipe Calderon this week with a mix of deference and diplomatic pomp that only this city can furnish. But state dinners, a congressional address and taking the stage with stars such as President Obama and Beyoncé aren't exactly his thing. As Mexicans would say, Calderon wasn’t in his mero mole.

For the three and a half years since he took office in December 2006, Calderon has favored a low profile in Washington, pursuing a very different type of bilateral relationship than his predecessor, Vicente Fox. Convinced that promising and demanding too much had served neither country well in the previous six years, Calderon chose instead to manage expectations by focusing on what was mutually beneficial and palatable to both Washington and Mexico City -- fighting organized crime and enhancing border security while streamlining legal crossings.

Such kid-glove diplomacy has served Calderon well as cooperation between both countries has reached unprecedented levels of assistance and understanding. In the last two years, Washington has appropriated more than $1 billion to assist Calderon in his deadly but courageous war against drug cartels.

Such aid is also evolving to support democratic institutions and communities caught in the crossfire, reflecting a more nuanced understanding of its neighbor's challenges. Moreover, Obama administration officials have repeatedly acknowledged the United States’ responsibility in Mexico’s struggle, something Mexicans have longed to hear.

Mexicans, however, have become less and less confident in Calderon’s anti-drug strategy, which has left nearly 23,000 dead. His party has suffered and prominent Mexican intellectuals and politicians have taken him to task for stirring up a beehive of violence. Under such circumstances, perhaps an internationally televised pat on the back from President Obama would do, the normally reserved Calderon, some good.

But the U.S. had more than praise in store for Calderon. Less than a month ago, Arizona adopted the harshest law in the country against illegal immigration. While the law faces several legal challenges and has already been partially amended, it unleashed a severe reaction in Mexico that has forced Calderon to be far more outspoken about immigration.

From the first moments of his State visit, Calderon denounced the new state law as discriminatory. Later he said he told Obama that Mexico rejects the criminalization of migration and that his government will "oppose firmly" the law's application. In his speech to a joint session of Congress, Calderon called the law “a terrible idea.”

As Mexican foreign policy expert Andres Rozental said this week in an interview, Calderon has long avoided “having to come out to defend or make public pronouncements about this issue, but now he sees himself forced” to do so.

It is unclear what effect Calderon's more impassioned approach will have on the heated U.S. debate on immigration. Standing by his Mexican counterpart, Obama reiterated his commitment to fix the broken U.S. immigration system but acknowledged that he doesn’t have the 60 votes in the Senate he would need "to get this done."

There is the chance that a gloves-off strategy could backfire and make it even harder to get Republicans on board. But it is hard to imagine that Mexico would not have some say in a debate that is likely to affect millions of its citizens and that would require Mexican cooperation regardless of which way reform proceeds.

Rozental is convinced that Calderon’s silence up until now, and that of President Vicente Fox in his last years in office, were ill advised. “Americans, as opposed to other cultures, like straight talk,” he said, and they would rather hear what Mexicans are thinking about an issue that so directly affects them.

But Americans also want to hear what Mexico is doing to stem migration. Andrew Selee, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute, stressed in an interview that Calderon “would be on shaky moral ground preaching about the need to change U.S. immigration law unless he couples it with a message about Mexico's responsibility to create opportunities for people to stay in Mexico.”

Calderon appeared to have heeded that advice. He spent a good part of his 35-minute speech before Congress describing his efforts “to transform Mexico into a land of opportunity” and thus give Mexicans one less reason to emigrate. “Mexico is determined to assume its responsibility. For us migration is not just your problem. We see it as our problem as well.”
Calderon also highlighted his government’s resolve to confront organized crime, despite the tremendous cost in lives, resources and his own political standing.

The Mexican leader may not be one to crave the international limelight. But he may have already accomplished more than his predecessors by arriving with tangible evidence that Mexico understands that there is a cost to better relations with the United States.