Mexico has elected its first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum.
The 61-year-old of Jewish extraction who holds a PhD as an energy engineer and currently serves as the mayor of Mexico City represents both a serious divergence and a concerning continuation of the policies the current president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly known as AMLO).
Both presidents vowed to work with the United States on the issue of mass immigration, and while Sheinbaum has yet to take office and put this commitment to the test, we can say with some certainty that she will be no better on the issue than AMLO was, and he has been quite the disaster.
AMLO constantly reneged on promises to America to stop the migrant inflow, such as when he ceased deportations from Mexico, thereby allowing hundreds of thousands more people to reach the United States. AMLO consistently tried to bribe the United States whenever the country requested assistance with immigration flowing up from Mexico. AMLO once demanded more than $20 billion in foreign aid for Hispanic countries, as well as demanding that 10 million Hispanics in the United States be given legal status.
Most recently AMLO’s administration said it would refuse deportations carried out by the State of Texas, regardless of the proven identity of deportees, because said deportations would “violate the rights” of Mexican citizens.
Apparently, AMLO believes Mexicans have a right to reside in the United States, regardless of legal status. This is made more evident by the fact that AMLO recently stated that Mexico’s newfound status as America’s largest trading partner gives the country “leverage” on the immigration issue.
AMLO has been no friend to Americans, and Sheinbaum is his hand-picked successor.
And then there is Claudia Sheinbaum herself …
Sheinbaum has a spotty record of statements when it comes to the issue of immigration and has promised to work with whoever wins the upcoming American presidential election. Still, these promises ring hollow considering her political priorities diverge sharply from even those meek promises and failings of of López Obrador.
Whereas AMLO was unwilling to address the question of abortion, leaving it to the Mexican Supreme Court and the country’s constituent states, Sheinbaum has said she would make the matter a priority.
AMLO similarly avoided the thorny topic of homosexual marriage and preferred to focus on the country’s economic ills, though whether he did a decent job is something only Mexicans can truly decide. Sheinbaum on the other hand wants a “gender-focused” culture that combats heterosexuality and has said she would prioritize LGBTQ (etc) rights during her administration. This is believable as she has a strong track record already. Sheinbaum eliminated ‘gendered’ school uniforms as mayor of Mexico City and was one of the first politicians in the country to attend pride parades.
Sheinbaum has also said she wants to prioritise feminism, the state of women in the family (meaning she wants to attack nuclear families) and various made various other hard-line liberal stances.
If this is what the Mexican people truly want (though the polling on individual issues seems to indicate otherwise) then that is their business, but this newfound domestic focus on various left-wing social issues will spell disaster for Americans.
The few utterances Sheinbaum has made on the issue of immigration are worrying, though. Sheinbaum has already promised to “defend Mexicans abroad” from deportation or repatriation by the United States.
Some commentators have gone so far as to label Sheinbaum an “activist” who will side with the most radical pro-immigrant elements of Mexico’s political framework. David Abraham, a professor at the University of Miami, believes that Sheinbaum will side with immigrants and against the United States even more doggedly than AMLO has, mostly due to Sheinbaum’s commitment to “international human rights”.
Another academic, Andrew Selee of the Migration Policy Institute, says that Sheinbaum “sees the fate of Mexican migrants in the United States as the most important migration issue that she needs to deal with,”
We sincerely doubt that ‘dealing with’ the issue meant to assist the United States in ending and ultimately reversing the migration trends from Mexico.
Sheinbaum may, therefore, be significantly more hostile toward the United States than AMLO ever was. She may even turn a blind eye to increased immigration, drug trafficking, and people smuggling into the United States as a method to pressure the American government into giving her what she wants.
Even if Sheinbaum does not actively attack the United States in the same way that AMLO has it is clear by her socially focused agenda that she is unlikely to focus on the immigration issues and will view them as an aside to her radical plans to restructure Mexican society.
Sheinbaum has also started announcing her slate of future cabinet members, many of whom will be carried over from the AMLO administration or upgraded from their posts in her state-level cabinet from her time as Mayor of Mexico City.
Rosa Icela Rodríguez, who has served as Mexico’s Secretary of Security since 2020, will remain in government despite a track record of failure. Cartel violence has surged during the tenure of Ms. Rodríguez and she and AMLO pursued a strategy now mockingly called “hugs not bullets” in dealing with the cartels. Sheinbaum plans to move her to a new post she will continue to have a voice in the security strategy of a government that has failed so spectacularly at domestic security that its cartel violence now regularly overflows into the United States.
Sheinbaum’s choice for Mexico’s foreign secretary should also concern Americans. Juan Ramón de la Fuente is a longtime political operator and diplomat who has served as Mexico’s ambassador to the United Nations and played a role in attempting to stop the arrival of Haitian migrants to Mexico, though to little effect. If Fuente’s track record is to be an indication of his future performance he will spend much more time dealing with the war in Ukraine and focusing on issues beyond the scope of North America than he will in dealing with Mexico’s immediate neighbour and largest trading partner, the United States.
And then there is Lázaro Cárdenas Batel whom Sheinbaum has selected to function as her chief of staff and to run her office as president. Mr. Batel is perhaps the most problematic appointment for them all when it comes to his views on immigration and the United States. Batel has long been a proponent of Mexicans affecting political change in America to the benefit of their homeland and participated in a Wilson Center project known as the Strengthening Hometown Associations: Mexican Immigrants as Agents for Political Change in Mexico and the United States.
Batel has written that the United States has an obligation to provide Mexican migrants with food, healthcare, education, work, a fair wage, and the right to ‘not migrate’ should they refuse to cross a border they’ve already crossed. Mr. Batel went further in the 2010 piece, saying that the United States should expect two to seven million new undocumented immigrants and that no move, including constructing a wall, could be expected to stop this “powerful stream of humans moved by need and by the unequal situation among our countries.”
Lázaro Cárdenas Batel and his views on immigration post an existential threat to American health, safety, and wellbeing.
Perhaps most insulting of all to the American people is that American politicians are unlikely to do anything about Sheinbaum’s aggression. They did nothing about AMLO’s antagonism, after all.
But this does not mean that American policymakers are without options.
Visa Cancellation and Deportation:
Only 35% of the 10.7 million Mexican immigrants living in the United States possess US citizenship. The United States government should and could cancel the visas of the remaining 7 million Mexicans who reside in the country, starting with the 15% of Mexican immigrants who work in high-powered scientific or cultural positions in the United States. Disrupting the incomes of high-earning Mexican immigrants will put significant pressure on Sheinbaum.
Ambassador Michele Thoren Bond has testified before the US Congress that visa restrictions are an effective tool at convincing recalcitrant states to cooperate, but as is typical with the modern neoliberal government of the US, the State Department is not enforcing these rules. A 2020 Congressional Report also backs up these claims of visa restriction effectiveness. The report outlines how the nation of Guyana was subject to visa restrictions and relented after two months, finally issuing travel documents for 113 criminal Guyanese the United States sought to deport.
Removing Remittances:
The next step would be to limit or outright restrict the flow of remittances to Mexico from and through the United States. In 2023 some $63.3 billion flowed to Mexico in remittances from the United States, representing nearly 5% of the Mexico economy. Cutting off this income flow would significantly damage the Mexican consumer economy without affecting the large volumes of trade between the two countries.
Mexico’s elite class, represented best by the corrupt billionaire Carlos Slim, would feel an immediate sting as Mexicans have less money to eat at their restaurants and consume their popular products. This would, again, place significant domestic pressure on Sheinbaum to work with the United States.
There are other options as well, such as restricting the sale of luxury goods to Mexico. This strategy has worked in the past to force reluctant African and Chinese leaders to work with the West, and unlike these countries, Mexico is one of the world’s most prolific consumers of luxury goods with some goods being consumed on a societal scale beyond simply the elite consumption that defines places like China.
Conclusion:
America’s neighbours are picking increasingly hostile leaders. These leaders continually threaten American national security and contribute significantly to shrinking the White majority that founded and defined the United States.
Unless American politicians are willing to take up a genuinely nationalist stance in defence of the homeland it will be foreign presidents like Claudia Sheinbaum who determine what the America of the future looks like.
This article originally appeared on White-Papers and is republished by The Noticer with permission. Follow the White Papers Policy Institute on Telegram here.
