We than the largely non-agricultural workers of El Paso. found that 14.1 percent of El Paso's commuters made more than $80 a week, while these figures in San Luis were 27.8 percent and 37.9 percent in Calexico. Similarly, seven of the 16 commuter-owned color TV sets we found were in Tijuana, and that city had the largest incidence of multiple car ownership, with 24 of the 73 respondents there owning two or three cars. All of this suggests that adverse effects on the Green Card commuter is a very uneven one, with the impact being the greatest along the Texas border; despite this differen tial impact, however, any solutions - the subject of the next will have to be worked out largely in Gulf to Pacific terms. 224 VIII. Some Alternative Solutions to the Commuter Problem. As we have shown in Chapter V, the trans-border work force creates serious economic problems for American residents, particularly poor American residents. It is primarily through this work force that Mexican poverty has spread into the border regions of the United States. The problem is not a simple one; it crosses many jurisdictional barriers within the United States and Mexico, as well as the international boundary. As the result of the presence of the commuters, we have concluded: American resident workers lose jobs, they work at lower wages than they would otherwise; they are less likely to be represented by unions, and probably more likely to be forced into the migrant stream. Further, the way Federal programs operate along the border too often tends to leak benefits to border crossers while denying resident workers the benefits which would accompany the vigorous enforcement of labor standards laws. It is our conclusion, further, that with the exception of San Diego, the border is essentially depressed, and that it is particularly unfortunate that an artificial flooding of the labor markets should take place in such an area. We feel, finally, that the high rates of unemployment and low wages which characterize the border labor markets are partially the results of the Government's policies, and these policies, therefore, should be changed. Some of the proposed solutions to the problems probably would cause more trouble than a continuation of the status quo: for instance, an immediate forced migration of all the alien commuters and their families (and with the surveyed Green Card commuters having families averaging 5.5 members), this would suggest an immediate influx of 225,000 people. This is based on the INS alien commuter count of August 1969 (47,876) and our survey showing that 87.4% of the commuters would move rather than lose their American job. Virtually no one is suggesting such a course of action, but this is a straw man which opponents of a tighter border erect on every possible occasion. We will discuss below each of a wide variety of possible partial solutions to the problem, and will conclude by describing an optimal package of proposals. 226 A. Do Nothing This is the most likely course of action to be taken by the Government in the near future, and perhaps the most likely one to be taken for years to come. The attractions of doing nothing are great, to the Mexican Government (and therefore our State Department), the Border Establishment and to the INS. to An argument used to support non-action is that given the current requirements of the immigration law (particularly labor certification and the 120,000 Western Hemisphere limitation) the problem will solve itself over time because the supply of new commuters has been cut sharply. We have shown in Chapter III how the labor certification requirement has been avoided on the border. The 120,000 limit, however, will have something of a dampening effect on the creation of new commuters, but no one yet knows how significant this will be. Dr. Rungeling, although not an advocate of non-action, predicts that current trends and immigration restrictions will end the commutation program in twenty to thirty years. 1 One also hears from State Department officials and people on Capitol Hill2 that consular officials are not issuing visas to new commuters. In a narrow sense I am sure that they are right; that if a would-be immigrant is frank enough to tell the American Consulate that he plans to become a commuter, he probably would not get his visa. But I suspect that the question is not asked often, and if it is, the answer is not always a completely honest one. 7 What these arguments fail to consider is that there are two sources of new commuters - Some commuters are created when a Mexican National secures a Green Card, and then starts to commute, without ever living in the United States. (Our survey found that a substantial number of legal border crossers had never lived in America.) This is the pattern wually discussed. Another pattern is that of the Mexican National who gets his card, and then tries to make it in the American economy; after a while a number of them, particularly if their families are growing, come to the conclusion that they cannot live in the American economy, although they must continue to work in it. So without having planned it that way they become (Of the aliens surveyed 24 percent had lived in - commuters. the United States for more than two years, another 20 percent had lived here for between six months and two years, and 11 percent had tried it for under six months. The citizens experience had been similar.) There were 701,979 Green Card holders (permanent resident aliens of Mexican nationality) in January 1969, a figure which should include most of the forty-seven thousand counted |