Immigration and Mexico-US Border Controls: Constrained Bilateralism?

With both legal and illegal flows crossing the Mexico-US border, intractable problems have displaced the integrative spirit of the 1990s. That integrative spirit made Mexico the third largest US trading partner and the United States the top Mexican counterpart;2 two-thirds of Mexico’s foreign investment originate in the United States; and Mexican culture deepens while the Spanish language diffuses wider in the United States than ever before.3 Some consequences of the illegal threats: behavior and institutional reinforcement of Westphalian features and a wholesale rejection of non-Westphalian possibilities, and the retreat to bilateral relations. Nowhere this is more evident than along the 3,000 kilometer border, and for the 12 million people born in Mexico living in the United States.