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MANKATO Business groups' push for immigration reform and welcoming immigrants (see related story) comes against a backdrop of immigration protests in the U.S. and fear and uncertainty in other countries.

James Dimock, a communications professor at Minnesota State University, has for years led student trips to Columbia, Nicaragua, Cuba and Mexico. The most recent 10-day trip was in Mexico last month at the time President Trump's travel ban was announced.

"Generally the feeling was they were very, very concerned about what was going to happen."

He doesn't believe the flow of illegal immigrants will be slowed by deportations or a border wall.

"There's a myth about why people migrate. They're leaving friends, family, food, their comfort zone to go to a placed they'll often be treated hostilely. But they're doing it because of the need they have for their family," he said.

"A wall will make it more difficult but it will just make corruption more potent, it won't slow that flow of people. If someone can be bribed to lift a crossing gate they will be bribed to find another way across. It's not a physical barrier we're fighting but financial and corruption. If they can't support their families they will keep coming."

Dimock said that with 40 percent or more of the Mexican population in poverty, the ability of family members to work in the U.S. and send money (remittances) home is their lifeline. Mexican families take in $25 billion annually in remittances.

"Remittances are in the top three sources of revenue for the states and country. If they were to lose or inhibit that remittance money they'd be devastated. The government has no mechanism to address poverty," he said. Cutting into those remittances, he said, will only make people more desperate to get into the U.S. illegally. "It's a rational decision they're making."

He said the Mexicans he meets, mostly farmers, miners, activists and rural village residents, are hostile to NAFTA. The agreement, he said, flooded Mexico with cheap U.S. corn, decimating some 2 million farmers there who left their land but often found no other living, sending many of them to the U.S.

He said those people would welcome a renegotiated NAFTA, but he thinks if NAFTA is radically altered with no good replacement, corn exports from the U.S. would dry up. "There would be starvation."

He said Mexicans also despise NAFTA because American farmers and agribusiness are heavily subsidized by the government, allowing for the cheaper grain and other farm products to be sold to Mexico, while Mexican farmers receive little or no support.

Finally, he said a portion of the NAFTA agreement, called the Mrida Initiative, aimed at combating drug production and smuggling from Mexico, has harmed many Mexicans with no drug connections. The initiative, launched during the Bush administration, was funded with a $2.5 billion appropriation from Congress. American companies, Dimock said, thought it would bring a level of law and order in Mexico, allowing them to do business there more easily.

"There's been no decline in drugs flowing across the border from Mexico since it went into effect. Heroin and coke has increased since then and the quality of it has increased."

He said the funding prompted the militarization of police forces all over Mexico, forces that he said often turn on Mexicans who protest or take on local governments or businesses.

"A lot of Mexicans have just disappeared. They're last seen with someone from the government and then they're never heard from again."

Follow Tim Krohn on Twitter @TimKrohn

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MSU prof says wall won't slow illegal immigration - Mankato Free Press