Nobel Economist: Mexico's Economic Boom Will Make The Immigration Debate Irrelevant … For several years now, net migration from Mexico has fallen to zero. Gary Becker, a Nobel Prize-winning University of Chicago economist, writes that it's got little to do with the U.S. Rather, it's mostly thanks to Mexico and it's growing middle class, as expressed in lower birth rates and rising earnings. – Business Insider

Dominant Social Theme: Mexico is a powerhouse of profitability.

Free-Market Analysis: So Mexico is coming up in the world. Meanwhile, the US is headed in the other direction. This article makes the point that this trend is going to erase the argument over immigration now taking place in the US.

Is it really feasible that Mexico is going to overtake, or at least rival, the US as an economic powerhouse? Certainly we see signs that the US drug war continues to destabilize large parts of Mexican society. But perhaps somehow Mexico is going to survive and thrive anyway.

As we have reported recently, there is a new regime in Mexico with a commitment to transparency and good government. Perhaps this effort will be lauded as making the Mexican economy more successful than it already is.

More likely, as we have pointed out numerous times, the West generally is struggling because of its central banking policies, and these policies are no accident. Bankers often pretend not to anticipate the results of their actions but how can they not know?

The West, it seems, is being deliberately destroyed as an industrial and economic power while the East – the BRICs especially – are being empowered. We would not be surprised, therefore, to find that Mexico ends up with an economy that grows steadily more powerful as the US's subsides.

Here's more from the article:

One important cause [of Mexico's reduced emigration] is the sharp decline in Mexican birth rates during the past couple of decades. Not long ago Mexico was a country with high birth rates that produced many young adults who had trouble finding jobs.

Now, the Mexican total fertility rate (TFR)-the number of children born to a typical woman over her lifetime- has plummeted to about 2.25. This rate is only a little above the population replacement rate of 2.1. Unlike in the past, the number of young people in Mexico will no longer be growing rapidly over time, so that the numbers looking for work in the Mexican labor market will be on the decline.

The push from Mexico has also diminished because its economy has been growing at a good clip during the past 9 years. Excluding the large drop in 2009, the growth rate in real GDP has been over 4% per year. Mexico's growth rate after 2009 considerably exceeds the American rate of under 2%, which is remarkable since about 80% of all Mexican exports go to the depressed American economy. One consequence is that the gap between earnings in Mexico and the United States is narrowing. This clearly reduces the demand to immigrate to America, especially under the difficult circumstances illegal immigrants face.

The article points out that "strong immigration flows" could restart the immigration debate but that the reduced flows currently should contribute to a calmer debate over Mexican immigration.

Of course, this is a logical fallacy. If Mexicans are no longer immigrating to the US, why have the debate at all? The answer, in our view, is that de facto immigrant citizenship for Mexicans coming to the US is a goal of corporatist America and of US elites generally.

It should be clear at this point – given the historical record – that US officials working with Canadian and Mexican leaders continue to plan what their countrymen do not want … a North American Union that will rival Europe's. One currency, one trade union and even eventually one country are all contemplated.

The pressure for immigration "reform" is endless and was generated by the former Bush administration as much as it from the current one. It is a bipartisan gambit that has its roots in a globalist geopolitical strategy.

Already Canadian, Mexican and US security forces work together on border security, the drug war and, of course, the "war on terror." These are not merely modest gestures but increasingly deep alliances that have been put into place by an elaborate series of treaties, many of which were initiated and signed during the Bush administration.

We've also reported on the vast highway and railroad network that is being built in fits and starts between Canada and Mexico, and which will cut the US in two. Because of domestic opposition, those in favor of construction have not been able to make as much progress as has perhaps been hoped. But now there is a plan to construct the same sort of infrastructure from Canada to the US to transport shale oil.

Of course, the US has plenty of shale oil, apparently. But that is not the point. The point seems to be the construction of this vast complex knifing through the US.

The article concludes by observing that passions ignited by the immigration debate will be cooled by Mexico's economic success. "It's much easier for Congress to discuss something when there's not as much at stake."

Perhaps that's just the point.