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Mexico joins the United States...in the 1990s?

History Learner

Well-known member
Strange as it seems to us now, during the early phases of the "Unipolar Moment" and enduring for at least the entirety of the 1990s, there actually was some very strong indications to suggest Mexico could plausibly be added to the United States. Noel Maurer had this to say some years ago:

Noel wrote:
> ---Hell, while I'm here:
>
> A 1991 poll by the magazine Este País showed, to the
> astonishment of the organizers, that 59 percent of
> respondents would be in favor of forming a single
> country with the United States if it resulted in
> an improvement in their standard of living.
>
> So don't be so sure about the strength of Mexican
> nationalism. There is a film of anti-Americanism
> in the middle class. It is loud, and it causes
> Mexican presidents to tread carefully. But it
> does not run very deep.

Noel worked for the U.S. Federal Government for about two years in Mexico and is an Associate Professor at GWU, so he does have some credentials to be speaking on this. As for the Este País poll, here is a citation of it. Just shy of a decade later they asked the same question again and found the support had endured. Outside of the 59% supporting it on the pre-condition of improved living standards, 21% supported doing such without any pre-conditions.

The easiest PoD is probably to have the 1988 election directly spiral into a Second Mexican Civil War, which was actually pretty close to happening IOTL. For various reasons, I'll look at another PoD which indirectly causes the above via Saddam's Iraq and its war with Iran in the 1980s. How? Have Saddam be successfully assassinated at Dujail in 1982 by Kurdish fighters, which was a near miss. In the event of the death of Saddam, given the purges he had previously conducted, it's likely Ad-Douri or Khairallah Talfah would take power. Both have their issues, but would still definitely be better than Saddam in that they would more willing to let the Iraqi Army engage in offensives and counter-offensives against the Iranians. Saddam IOTL was pretty reluctant for many years to allow such, resulting in the relatively static war that dominated much of that conflict.

With a more competent Iraqi leadership from 1982 onward, it's likely the conflict could end sooner via greater exhaustion of the Iranians. Aiding this would probably be stepped up support by the Superpowers to Iraq, in order to prevent a decisive Iranian victory. The Soviets in particular would increase their material aid and training efforts to the Iraqi Army, likely on the pre-condition of improving relations with Syria. Overall, I see the war ending much sooner but along the same lines as OTL; let's say 1985. With the war over, both Iran and Iraq re-enter the global oil market and the Tanker War is avoided. Thanks to improved ties with Syria, the pipeline to the Mediterranean is reopened in 1985 a few months after the end of the war. The Saudis also still open the floodgates of their own production but slightly ahead of OTL's schedule, thanks to pressure from the Iraqis and Iranians being back on the market.

This has the effect of massively driving down oil prices from 1985 onward, at a time Mexico was struggling with its own debt crisis. The collapse in oil prices would deepen this by removing the main Mexican export, to make repayment impossible without greater austerity which would obviously undermine the PRI regime. An OTL example of this in action, funnily enough, is the crisis of the late 1980s in the East Bloc. So by 1988 you have increasingly declining living standards due to austerity and an overall collapsing economy just as the PRI has to blatantly steal an election. Once that occurs, it's likely the situation spirals out of control with widespread violence and civil disorder making Mexico ungovernable. Such a situation, by default, would be intolerable for the United States because of the risk of violence spilling across the border, waves of refugees and the fact Mexico completely defaulting on its loan repayments would create a 2008-style crash in the Banking Industry, creating an intense political need to do something and do it now. This would likely require some sort of intervention, as the ruling PRI-regime is discredited but the opposition would not offer a meaningful alternative at this point, at least from U.S. interests. Perhaps military, but also economic and political. As the U.S. goes about the difficult task of propping Mexico up, it's likely the annexationist sympathies would come to the fore because it would be clear to the average Mexican that Mexico as an entity has failed while the U.S. provides a meaningful degree of security and prosperity. From there, you get a cascade effect, with Mexican States increasing petitioning for annexation.

For a real world model of this in action, see both the GOP and Democrats IOTL putting Puerto Rican Statehood on the Agenda. Unlike Puerto Rico, however, Mexican-Americans compose a major political bloc, especially in major states like Texas and California, while the financial classes would be more apt to push for it in order to ensure repayment of the debt, at least in some form. With this confluence of incentives, I see annexation being achieved by the early 1990s, likely on the basis of a national vote within the rebuilding Mexico.

So what would be the ramifications of this, first domestically? For that, I turn to NAFTA Is Not Enough: Steps toward a North American Community by Robert Pastor, Brookings Institution Press (2002):

From the lessons learned from the EU, the three governments should establish a North American Development Fund that would concentrate on investing in infrastructure from the border to the center of the country. If roads are built, investors will come and fewer people would emigrate. A second objective should be education. In the mid-1980s, Spain and Portugal had an educational profile comparable to Mexico’s, but an infusion of EU funds into higher education had a profound effect, more than doubling enrollment. In contrast, Mexico’s level of tertiary education has remained the same. The additional benefit of supporting higher education in remote areas is that these new institutions could become centers for development, and students and professors could help upgrade elementary and secondary schools in the area. That is what Spain and Portugal did.​

Instead of creating a new bureaucracy or modifying the North American Development Bank, which has neither the experience nor the mandate, the North American Development Fund should be administered by the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. If the United States contributed at the EU level, that would amount to $400 billion. This figure is useful for alerting Americans to the magnitude of the EU commitment and the meagerness of North America’s, but no one believes it is possible at the current time. The World Bank has estimated that Mexico needs $20 billion a year for ten years just to upgrade its infrastructure. A development fund that could loan, say, half of that would have a significant impact on Mexico and North America. Fox has proposed that all three governments contribute in proportion to the size of their economies. The United States’ contribution would be the largest of the three but could be in callable capital or loan guarantees. It would be roughly comparable to the amount that the United States contributed to the Alliance for Progress forty years ago. Mexicans already buy more per capita from the United States than any other country except Canada. Stimulating Mexico’s growth, therefore, would have a double return on the investment.​

It would be in the range of $10-20 Billion per year for 10 years for Mexico to develop it's infrastructure to first world standards. In the 1990s, the money was certainly there for that; the Peace Dividend meant defense spending fell from $305 Billion in 1990 to $271 Billion per annum in 1996. As Pastor notes, this investment would also incur indirect benefits to justify it, because this infrastructure project would increase consumption and that would benefit American businesses. Education funding and infrastructure development together would likewise result private investment chasing the Federal investment, reducing the incentive to move elsewhere by creating opportunities in the new Mexican States. Most of the immigration influx in the 2000s was driven by the impacts of NAFTA, which won't exist here.

However, I don't think these new opportunities need come at the expense of the existing U.S. States. A big allure of Mexico for American business was the lower wages, lack of labor rights, and comparatively low environmental standards, which was no longer hold here. Old Mexico would be subjected to the same minimum wage and pollution restrictions as the Old U.S. states, which while an improvement for the inhabitants of the U.S. States would also discourage the old ones to ship their industry there to the same extent. Certainly there would still be some-after all, the South did attract Midwestern industry in the late few decades of the 20th Century-but it wouldn't be enough in my estimation. Politically, the fact these jobs were staying in America would also help.

Expanding on the politics of it from an American context, there's a lot there for both parties. To focus in on the Republicans, in both 1988 and 1992 they won roughly 30% of the Hispanic vote; this isn't Detroit level margins at all. Likewise, the GOP is big tent composed of several different groups. Business interests in the party would be behind this, for the reasons outlined by Pastor of an expanded Mexican market to compete in, while Evangelicals would be all about it for the strengthening of the Moral Majority. What other groups of real power are left at that point to be opposed? Immigration Restrictionism wouldn't be as an easy of sell given they are now fellow Americans and the GOP of then isn't the same of today; the Sierra Club was Leftist in general bent and Barbara Jordan was a Democrat.

How about the overall political structure? In 1990 the U.S. had a population of 250 Million while Mexico was at 84 Million. Under the OTL 1990 level of ~466,000 voters per electoral vote, the Mexican States would receive 180 ECs as a collective whole. Presuming a wave a wave of Democrat-voting ex Mexicans turn the Southwest Blue a generation early and Working Class White resentment in the Midwest did the same, the Mexican States voting GOP would balance it out; Mexico and the South would become the GOP's base from which they could contest the Presidency. The overall stance on economics would turn populist sooner, but Democrats wouldn't mind that and we know the GOP under the right circumstances would feel the same.

Finally, on a note for the polling of Mexicans at this time, 59% supported annexation if it increased their living standards. Another 25% supported such without any pre-conditions. What I have not been able to determine is if this subject was a part of the 59% or in an addition. American minimum wage standards, an infrastructure investment scheme, education funding, pollution control and, finally, American Law and Order would certainly be attractive overall, and if the 25% is a part of that 59%, then they were strong feelings in the direction of annexation anyway. If the 25% is not, then you're looking at over 80% of Mexicans being open to the idea overall, and the benefits could seal the deal.
 
That's a lot of words written on the basis of a magazine poll.

You know what words don't appear? 'Racism.' 'Discrimination.' 'Bigotry.' 'Prejudice.' Or, for that matter, 'Spanish' or 'Language.'

Leaving aside the incredibly generous dismissal of Mexican nationalism, any idea that an American president and their party would survive a month in office after floating the idea of giving tens of millions of non-white, non-english speaking people citizenship- while rebuilding the country after a civil war, apparently!- is ludicrous.
 
The US would never accept and it would cause an economic collapse with two very different and imbalanced countries merging.

Mexico is the second largest trading partner of the United States and has been for sometime; their economies are highly integrated with Mexico being a major source of parts for U.S. industries, in addition to a major source of agricultural goods. What about them being formally integrated-when they have been informally for decades under NAFTA-would engender a collapse?

That's a lot of words written on the basis of a magazine poll.

You know what words don't appear? 'Racism.' 'Discrimination.' 'Bigotry.' 'Prejudice.' Or, for that matter, 'Spanish' or 'Language.'

Leaving aside the incredibly generous dismissal of Mexican nationalism, any idea that an American president and their party would survive a month in office after floating the idea of giving tens of millions of non-white, non-english speaking people citizenship- while rebuilding the country after a civil war, apparently!- is ludicrous.

Este Pais is one of the main pollsters of Mexico, it's like dismissing Gallup or NBC/Marist as just a newspaper. In the 1990s, it was actually the premier pollster and one of the first to emerge as PRI-rule ended. They actually conducted the poll several times over the course of the 1990s and found the same results, it wasn't a one off event but part of re-occurring campaign which focused on Mexican nationalism as the PRI-regime ended and the dominance of the United States emerged at the end of the Cold War.

As for the United States, I think you're projecting very backwards notions upon a more contemporary time. Reagan definitely survived office after passing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 and George W. Bush would go on to win 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004. Mexican-Americans also tend to skew Left Wing for various reasons (Irish and Italians used to be the same way), but Mexicans as a nation don't. Many in the GOP, both then and now, would be pleased at the intense opposition to things like abortion in Mexico that could form the basis of an outreach. It's worth noting Puerto Rico has the same rate of English usage as Mexico and the latter is even IOTL moving towards a bilingual education system.

Speaking of Puerto Rico, it is a real world model of this in action, as both the GOP and Democrats IOTL put Puerto Rican Statehood in their platforms since 2016. Unlike Puerto Rico, however, Mexican-Americans compose a major political bloc, especially in major states like Texas and California, while the financial classes would be more apt to push for it in order to ensure repayment of the debt, at least in some form. With this confluence of incentives, I see annexation being achieved by the early 1990s, likely on the basis of a national vote within the rebuilding Mexico.
 
That's a lot of words written on the basis of a magazine poll.

You know what words don't appear? 'Racism.' 'Discrimination.' 'Bigotry.' 'Prejudice.' Or, for that matter, 'Spanish' or 'Language.'

Leaving aside the incredibly generous dismissal of Mexican nationalism, any idea that an American president and their party would survive a month in office after floating the idea of giving tens of millions of non-white, non-english speaking people citizenship- while rebuilding the country after a civil war, apparently!- is ludicrous.
Also, I'm assuming that a Mexican Civil War would result in a massive refugee crisis in the US, like even bigger than the Syrian refugee crisis big. And as history has repeatedly shown, people love it when massive numbers of refugees pour in and there's no racist backlash at all.

Plus, this actually makes the immigration problem worse. Average income in Mexico is about 1/3rd that of the US, and that's before considering the devastation of a hypothetical civil war. It's fairly obvious that if you provide people with freedom of movement to an area with much higher incomes a lot of them will do it, which means that a large number of Mexicans are going to be moving north and taking jobs in the US. It's not technically immigration, but the migrants are clearly going to be an out-group in America so the difference is completely academic to someone who thinks they "took our jobs."
 
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Mexico had majority support for unification with the United States if it would improve their living standards. I'm not familiar enough with Mexico to know whether that poll (or series of polls) was reliable or not, but hypothetically, let's say it is.

Here's the crux of the problem. For Mexicans to be interested in unification, it requires that they believe it would improve their living standards. But the flip side of that is that means that American living standards would have to be notably higher than Mexican. And in turn, that means that Americans would believe that admitting Mexico to the country would mean that existing Americans would have lower living standards.

No prizes for guessing what the American reaction would be. And that's even without taking into account any questions of American racism or other bigotry.
 
I can buy a Mexican civil war in the late 80s as plausible, I can buy "Mexico joins the US" as a fun what-if to think through, I can't buy "59% of Mexicans genuinely wanted a large foreign power to annex them" as anything more than a bad poll or a lot of disgruntled people just mouthing off. An America that actually wants to do it would have to be a very different America to the one that existed in the 90s too, if they're going to say "racism and language issues, not us"
 
Also, consider how ridiculously high the costs of this are. As the source OP used stated Mexico would need $20 billion a year for 10 years (or $200 billion) just to upgrade it's infrastructure. And the US is going to have to do a similar leveling up with healthcare, education, law enforcement, poverty reduction programs, anti-corruption initiatives, and a whole host of other things. There's also millions of additional people who now qualify for benefits programs like Social Security and Medicare, so spending on those programs is going to spike. Now factor in that the US is going to have to deal with rebuilding after a civil war, which increases the costs of all the programs mentioned above and adds new costs like peacekeeping operations, dealing with internally displaced people, providing necessities like food and fuel, and reintegrated former fighters into society. And given that Mexico's a basket case in this scenario the tax revenue they can contribute to this reconstruction is small, so it's going to fall on taxpayers in the original 50 states to fund this (which almost certainly means higher taxes).

Basically, this scenario presumes that the US takes on the most expensive government project since WWII to annex a nation that Americans don't even want.
 
Also, consider how ridiculously high the costs of this are. As the source OP used stated Mexico would need $20 billion a year for 10 years (or $200 billion) just to upgrade it's infrastructure. And the US is going to have to do a similar leveling up with healthcare, education, law enforcement, poverty reduction programs, anti-corruption initiatives, and a whole host of other things. There's also millions of additional people who now qualify for benefits programs like Social Security and Medicare, so spending on those programs is going to spike. Now factor in that the US is going to have to deal with rebuilding after a civil war, which increases the costs of all the programs mentioned above and adds new costs like peacekeeping operations, dealing with internally displaced people, providing necessities like food and fuel, and reintegrated former fighters into society. And given that Mexico's a basket case in this scenario the tax revenue they can contribute to this reconstruction is small, so it's going to fall on taxpayers in the original 50 states to fund this (which almost certainly means higher taxes).

Basically, this scenario presumes that the US takes on the most expensive government project since WWII to annex a nation that Americans don't even want.
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Mexico had majority support for unification with the United States if it would improve their living standards. I'm not familiar enough with Mexico to know whether that poll (or series of polls) was reliable or not, but hypothetically, let's say it is.

Here's the crux of the problem. For Mexicans to be interested in unification, it requires that they believe it would improve their living standards. But the flip side of that is that means that American living standards would have to be notably higher than Mexican. And in turn, that means that Americans would believe that admitting Mexico to the country would mean that existing Americans would have lower living standards.

No prizes for guessing what the American reaction would be. And that's even without taking into account any questions of American racism or other bigotry.

Mexico has a tax to GDP ratio of 16.2% as of 2017, as compared to 27.1% for the United States. Given Mexico would likely be brought under the same regulatory burden as the United States, applying the aforementioned U.S. rate to their OTL 2019 GDP of $1.15 Trillion results in ~$312 Billion in revenue gained. To put that into perspective, the entire cost of the refundable part of the Earned Income Tax Credit ($55 billion), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ($21 billion), Supplemental Security Income ($43.7 billion), food stamps ($75 billion), and housing vouchers ($18 billion) and the Child Tax Credit all together cost just $212 billion dollars. Granted, Medicaid might pose a problem, but that's quite possibly largely made up for by the fact that the median age of Mexico's population is 27.7 years (2015) while in the United States it's 38.2 years; in other words, Social Security and Medicare probably is made solvent by the influx of new workers. If that's not enough, it'll probably encourage the United States to start making reforms done like in other parts of OCED, in particular Singapore.

Meanwhile, on the U.S. side they've just added the 12th largest economy by industrial output, which outpaces other nations such as Australia and Russia while also closing in on being the same size as France and Italy in terms of GDP (PPP) even IOTL. As I noted upthread, a sustained investment of $200 Billion over 10 years could get the newly annexed Mexico to a modern infrastructure system, while U.S. education reforms could get it up to Spain/Italy levels in terms of education. Add in U.S. law preventing the Drug Wars and reducing corruption, and an ATL Mexican economy 30-50% larger is certainly in the ballpark by ATL 2019. Beyond that though, the money is definitely there; defense spending had decreased by roughly $40 Billion per annum in the 1990s.

I can buy a Mexican civil war in the late 80s as plausible, I can buy "Mexico joins the US" as a fun what-if to think through, I can't buy "59% of Mexicans genuinely wanted a large foreign power to annex them" as anything more than a bad poll or a lot of disgruntled people just mouthing off. An America that actually wants to do it would have to be a very different America to the one that existed in the 90s too, if they're going to say "racism and language issues, not us"

Again, this wasn't a single one off poll; it was repeatedly re-visited and re-run in the 1990s by Mexican pollsters and the support held. It hasn't be re-visited since 1998, and in the 2000s Anti-American sentiment kicked up for a variety of reasons, Iraq being a major one. Specifically on the American end, I think that's trying to project the Trump Era back; if the sentiment was fundamentally against any sort of differing racism and language issues, that runs counter to the 1986 Amnesty and the fact immigration was actually loosened further in the 1990s. A lot of the trigger events for the nativism of the 2010s can be traced to 2008 in particular but also the wider disasters of the Bush Years, rather than being innate since Reagan came in office or something, as seems to be the argument here.
 
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Also, consider how ridiculously high the costs of this are. As the source OP used stated Mexico would need $20 billion a year for 10 years (or $200 billion) just to upgrade it's infrastructure. And the US is going to have to do a similar leveling up with healthcare, education, law enforcement, poverty reduction programs, anti-corruption initiatives, and a whole host of other things. There's also millions of additional people who now qualify for benefits programs like Social Security and Medicare, so spending on those programs is going to spike. Now factor in that the US is going to have to deal with rebuilding after a civil war, which increases the costs of all the programs mentioned above and adds new costs like peacekeeping operations, dealing with internally displaced people, providing necessities like food and fuel, and reintegrated former fighters into society. And given that Mexico's a basket case in this scenario the tax revenue they can contribute to this reconstruction is small, so it's going to fall on taxpayers in the original 50 states to fund this (which almost certainly means higher taxes).

Basically, this scenario presumes that the US takes on the most expensive government project since WWII to annex a nation that Americans don't even want.

And like ignores like Mexican Nationalism, like while I would think post civil war mexico would welcome US aid in terms of rebuilding, thats compeleted different from becoming US american.
 
If you take this as a thought exercise: Mexico's already federal, you just add the 32 existing states to the US (you probably need to rethink how the flag works because who wants to draw 82 stars?). The Senate's easy enough, that's two senators for each like usual. But how do you figure out how many representatives? You'll need to change the Permanent Appointment Act to up the number of allowed congressmen rather than tell existing states "guess who's losing some seats"; Mexico's roughly a third of the US population in 1990, so maybe you chuck in 145 House seats, and then have the "fun" of figuring which state gets which seats.

(Though the states with barely any seats are now going to be going "wait, we're being outvoted by foreigners new states when we've been here longer, can we have some more reps?")
 
Again, this wasn't a single one off poll; it was repeatedly re-visited and re-run in the 1990s by Mexican pollsters and the support held.

So we're either saying a bunch of people repeatedly did a cack poll or a lot of Mexicans were talking crap to pollsters out of disgruntlement, or we're saying in the 90s that 59% of a country wanted their country to stop existing and be absorbed into a foreign nation with a different language, culture, and legal system that they had a messy history with & knew had people viewing them with contempt as racial 'others'. The former seems more plausible, to be frank.

(Also, no, it's not just the Trump Era going backwards that shows a number of Americans were racist about Mexico, the 80s and 90s are eras with widespread print, radio, TV etc records so we can see the racists existed)
 
So we're either saying a bunch of people repeatedly did a cack poll or a lot of Mexicans were talking crap to pollsters out of disgruntlement, or we're saying in the 90s that 59% of a country wanted their country to stop existing and be absorbed into a foreign nation with a different language, culture, and legal system that they had a messy history with & knew had people viewing them with contempt as racial 'others'. The former seems more plausible, to be frank.

(Also, no, it's not just the Trump Era going backwards that shows a number of Americans were racist about Mexico, the 80s and 90s are eras with widespread print, radio, TV etc records so we can see the racists existed)

I have seen absolutely no indication to indicate it was a part of a cack poll campaign, given this question was conducted by the top pollster in Mexico at the time and part of a wider exploration they did in the 1990s about Mexican attitudes, to the extent it has repeatedly been cited in scholarly works looking at Mexico in the wider context of the 1990s and into the 2000s. If it was just 60% of the nation acting of disgruntlement, you'd have to ask why they continued to do such throughout the 1990s-why didn't it fade? Why was it there in the first place?-as well as why they were completely serious on the other questions asked randomly.

You can add another data point to this in that Pew, in 2005, found that 40% of Mexicans stated they would be willing to leave Mexico for the United States. Being willing to leave everything they have ever known behind and to move to the nation that, as you stated, has a different language, culture, and legal system that Mexico had a messy history with & has people viewing them with contempt as racial 'others'...but none of that was a sufficient deterrent in their answer.

And yes, obviously racist people did exist in the 1980s and 1990s. They just didn't wield power/influence in the same way, given they were unable to stop the 1986 Immigration Reform, the loosening of immigration restrictions in the 1990s and, of course, I think it says something that both major parties have adopted Puerto Rican statehood in their platforms. The fundamental reasoning beyond this 1990s moment in Mexico-and why Puerto Rico keeps voting in favor of Statehood-is because the United States can offer serious economic benefits that improve people's lives and none of the deterrent factors you bring up can sufficiently overcome that allure.
 
I don't think you need to think polls are inaccurate to also think that asking about hypotheticals that are not on the table is likely to get less conservative answers than asking about policies that are actively being debated.

The question being asked is less 'will you vote for this' and more 'are you unhappy with the status quo'.
 
(Also, no, it's not just the Trump Era going backwards that shows a number of Americans were racist about Mexico, the 80s and 90s are eras with widespread print, radio, TV etc records so we can see the racists existed)

There's also the issue of how the biggest legit competition for jobs and thus source of a backlash isn't hillbillies, it's existing Hispanic American communities.

Newer waves of immigrants tend to disrupt previous waves of immigrants the most (one ironic example is Asian British people complaining about white Eastern Europeans taking their jobs).
 
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