From MAGA to DACA: Make the Americas Great Again

By Gonzalo López Martí  – Creative director, etc / lmmiami.com

• A new era of northbound Hispanic immigration is around the corner.
• Which America will welcome with, mostly, open arms.
• Here’s why.
• During the Obama administration more undocumented immigrants were deported than throughout the George W Bush years.
• President Obama talked pretty.
• Yet he carried one big stick.
• Granted: he went out on a limb to salvage the Dream Act with the hasty passage of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival), an executive order that, depending on who you ask, cost him considerable political capital.
• Fair enough.
• Enter the Trump presidency.
• The new POTUS’ rhetoric is, well, unpresidential.
• Bile, incendiary, impulsive, incoherent.
• Using Hispanics as a political piñata pays at the ballot box.
• Let’s face it, an awful lot of paranoid Americans see us Latinos as an existential threat.
• During Trump’s tenure, however, unemployment among US Hispanics has reached the lowest level ever.
• Talk about cognitive dissonance.
• Who should we hate?
• Who should we love?
• Life is full of paradoxes.
• Let’s put our biases and brittle feelings aside for a moment and look at the hard facts: geopolitics.
• Let’s talk about real existential threats.
• America is in a new cold war.
• Everything around us: trade, technology, finance, science, let alone diplomacy and defense, is mired in this muffled conflagration.
• The enemy: China, Russia, Iran et al (pick your favorite nemesis).
• Trump’s strategy?
• Isolationism, protectionism and exceptionalism.
• That’d be MAGA for simpletons.
• This strategic choice won’t last though.
• It is nearsighted.
• Cheating at solitary.
• America cannot afford to produce a planetary power vacuum for its enemies to occupy.
• America needs allies and markets to trade with.
• America, whether it likes it or not, must be the global sheriff.
• To protect free movement of goods and labor.
• This is critical for America’s domestic stability.
• Oddly enough, the super tight labor market we are enjoying today in Trumpland presents a number of threats.
• Inflation and labor shortage.
• Eventually, the spigot will need to be opened to fulfill vacancies and keep the cost of living at bay.
• Last but not least, Americans don’t have enough children.
• Never forget that Chindia and the Muslim world are home to over half the world’s population.
• 4 billion consumers, give or take.
• Who will trade with us if, in the context of a new cold war, we lock ourselves out of those markets?
• Who will pay the taxes Uncle Sam needs to stay afloat on the domestic front?
• You read my mind.
• It just so happens that Latin America is entering, once again an era of unrest and instability.
• D’you know what that means?
• The US of A will need to step up to the plate.
• The US of A, apart from opening its borders to Latin American refugees, will need to incentivize trade, security and stability in the region.
• Growth and prosperity.
• Repeat after me: free movement of goods and labor.
• “We can’t afford to have porous borders allowing narcoterrorism to cross north”.
• Fair enough.
• The US will need to collaborate with south of the border governments to nip the threats at the bud.
• A new alliance.
• Conclusion: the Trump administration has reduced northbound immigration to a trickle.
• It is a tactical maneuver that can’t and won’t last.
• A rebirth of the US Hispanic market is around the corner.
• A Marshall Plan for Latin America too.
• This is not wishful thinking.
• It is a strategic imperative for Uncle Sam.
• It is critical for short term stability and long term survival.
• And it is one Super Tuesday down the road.
• Whoever wins.
• You hate to share the grocery store checkout line with talkative Spanish-speakers?
• Sorry to hurt your feelings but there’s no other choice in the horizon.