A Modest Proposal on Immigration

I think we should let any Mexican who wishes to come to the United States and live here to do so. I like Mexicans a lot, and wouldn’t mind more of them here in the US. And I don’t think they should have to swim the Rio Grande and then hide in the shadows, or at least the shadows cast by the Home Depot. I think all they should have to do is fulfill the same requirements that Americans do if they want to move to Mexico. Fair is fair.

So I looked them up. Here they are, the requirements to obtain a Temporary Residency Permit in Mexico (good for one year). As we go along, I’ll be reversing these requirements to see what would be involved if you want to come to the US from Mexico, and converting them from Mexican weights and measures (futbol) to American (football), so that there’s a fair playing field:

• Valid Passport

You’re going to have to show both the original, and supply a copy. It’s got to be valid for at least 6 more months. You’ll need additional recent passport-sized photos, too, in color, front view, with a white background, and no glasses.

• Completed Application Form

You’ll be asked some uncomfortable questions. Have you ever been arrested? Bye bye. By the way, you have to have the form translated into Spanish if you’re entering Mexico, so turnabout is fair play. Our forms will be in English. The various consulates in the US where you apply for your permit to live in Mexico will be glad to supply you with a list of brothers-in-law translators who are qualified to perform this to their satisfaction. This approach is well known in US government offices in places like Boston, although their brothers in law are all Irish, but you get the idea.

• Consular Interview

If you’re an American heading to Mexico, and the consulate likes all the paperwork you submitted,  this interview is conducted at a Mexican consulate in the country where you currently live, i.e.: you cannot apply for this visa while you’re in Mexico. You can get it renewed inside Mexico, but not initially granted. So to keep it even, our southern neighbors will have to queue up at the US consulates in Mexico if they want to come to the US. There are nine in Mexico, so the lines to get into one should only stretch to Belize or so. At these interviews, you can be turned down for any reason, by the way, not only because your paperwork isn’t in order, so be sure to stock up on breath mints beforehand.

• Proof of Financial Solvency

Now we’re going to have to do some international math, so bear with me. To qualify for a Temporary Resident Permit, which will allow you to live in Mexico legally for one year, you have to prove your financial solvency in one of two ways:

1. Monthly income. You have to show proof that you’ve earned 300 days of the Mexican daily wage every month for at least the last six months. For Americans, that would be about $4,000USD to $4,500USD a month.
2. Savings or investments. If you can’t qualify for the monthly wage requirement, you can show proof that you’ve held 5,000 days-worth of the Mexican daily wage for at least the last 12 months. It can’t be borrowed money. Retirement funds are OK. In USD, that would be around $70,000.

OK. The US shouldn’t be so fussy. Let’s just use the same numbers. I had to look it up, but the US national minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. So that yields $58.00 per day for an 8-hour day. Let’s plug it in, and see what a Mexican would have to have burning a hole in their wallet to qualify to come to America under the same conditions:

1. Monthly income: 300 x $58.00 equals $17,400 USD per month, for at least the last six months.
2. Savings or investments: 5,000 x $58.00 equals $290,000 USD, held for at least the last twelve months.

Of course very few people earn the American national minimum wage. States set their own minimum wages, and they’re a lot higher. Since so many Mexicans would like to move to California, it might be fairer to use the Golden State’s minimum wage of $16.50 per hour as the base rate. So that gets us:

1. Monthly income: 300 days x  $132.00 USD per day equals $39,600 USD per month.
2. Savings or investments: 5,000 days x $132 per day equals $660,000 USD.

You’ll have to keep in mind that Mexico demands that the monthly income of a USian has to stay the same after you move to Mexico. You’re not allowed to work in Mexico, or have customers there. So to keep it equal for Mexicans moving to the US, which ever way they were earning their $39,600 per month in Mexico, they’re going to have to make sure that someone keeps mailing it to them after they move. You can’t take a resident’s job to earn it in Mexico, so it should be the same for the US. Your Social Security payments can count towards your income. I suspect that Mexican social security payments are less than $17,400 USD per month, but I might be wrong. The government owns the oil company down there, so maybe they’re all getting fat checks from Tio Petróleo. I am beset by doubts on that score, however.

You can skip renewing your Temporary Residency Permit for Mexico by applying right away for a permanent one. If you’re American, you’ll need to prove you earn around $6,750 per month, or have $269,300 in savings or investments to qualify. I suppose the US could just use the same numbers for incoming Mexicans, but if we were to use their own formula based on days of minimum wage, you’d need around… around…

All this arithmetic is giving me a headache. I’ll let Chad do it for us:

Plenty of movie producers make $66,000 a month, so if you want to move to L.A., I don’t see why everyone shouldn’t be required to earn that. Hell, I don’t think you should be able to move to Los Angeles from anywhere else in the US unless you have at least $2.6 million in ready cash. How else could you hope to put down first, last, and the security deposit on your rental apartment, with enough money left over to fill your car’s gas tank to escape in case the city burns down again?

So let’s stop making Mexicans run the Rio Grande Triathlon to get into the country (running over the Sierra Madre mountains, swimming the Rio Grande, and riding in the back of a stake truck for two days). Just show up at one of our convenient consulates with $1,160,000, and you can stay indefinitely.

It’s true you can jump the line going into Mexico by marrying a Mexican citizen. I believe the reverse still applies. A Mexican man could marry an American woman to become a citizen, for example, but I can’t recommend it. I married the last sane American woman a while back, and the country is currently populated entirely with assistant district attorneys. I suggest you save your pennies and fly solo.