A Marshall Plan to Rebuild Mexico?

"I'm not going to address the question of what to do with the immigrants already residing in the country. Instead I'm going to propose measures that I think should be taken to drastically reduce the flood of new immigrants. Since the issue has suddenly become primetime news, the question for Arizona policy-makers is what to do about this problem. Do we support President Bush's proposal to build a wall? I think there is a more productive and less insulting answer," says Dawson Thomas Rauch in an op-ed for the Tucson Citizen. "The problem is obvious, as is the solution. Arizona must take steps to improve the economic conditions in Mexico by encouraging statewide businesses to invest there and by pressuring the national government to adopt a policy similar to the Marshall Plan that was used to rebuild Western Europe after World War II. Arizona already has taken positive steps in this direction with its involvement in the free-enterprise zone that extends 90 miles into Mexico, which has been created to help promote American investments." [The op-ed was part of a contest by the Citizen for high-school student essays.]

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