The Ties that Bind
Oct. 8, 2026
In my first column last week, after a long hiatus, I offered a mea culpa and a promise to myself and to you to persevere and keep writing; I titled my Substack, Over The Wall. The title refers to my expat life here in Mexico, and the vantage I believe it gives me at a remove to see and comment on issues that may be obscured by the daily deluge of Trump Administration follies. Immigration and Mexico are among those issues.
Early in this presidential term, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detained without warrant both citizens and legal residents, and shot and killed protesters objecting to their draconian tactics. However, immigration has left the frontline of the midterm debate, overshadowed by the war in Iran, the persistent attempts to meddle in the midterm elections, and pronouncements of the president’s unlimited power “to do whatever he wants.”
Despite the smokescreens thrown up by those distractions, immigration still occupies a key place in the MAGA movement’s drive to alter the fundamental principles of American Democracy. We should never forget what Donald Trump said in launching his presidential bid in 2015: “When Mexico sends their people, they are not sending their best.” By demonizing those of Mexican heritage and cultural origin, that comment laid the foundation for ostracizing anyone deemed to be Not American, and creating a political landscape where all “others” were enemies of the government.
Mexico remains at the center of the debate.
I want to revisit things I have written before about Mexico, and the relationship of its people with the United States. Let’s be clear. Mexico and the United States are two different cultures, with different languages, colonial heritages, and religions. They share the 10th longest border between two nations on the planet. There is no mistaking the border —the contrasts are starkly visible whether you step across the border in San Diego-Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez-El Paso, Laredo-Nuevo Laredo or Brownsville-Matamoros. As Alan Riding described in Distant Neighbors, his seminal work in 1985 about the U.S.-Mexican relationship, it is truly a case of so near and yet so far.
Since Riding’s book, those differences have narrowed. The 1992 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) turned Mexico upside down, and along with privatization of key industries, transformed the country. Today, in every major city, you can find U.S. chain outlets from Costco to Walmart, to Kentucky Fried Chicken to McDonald’s to Office Max and Home Depot. The statistics highlight the intertwining of the two economies and cultures: as of 2025, Mexico is the United States’ largest trading partner at $971 billion (per Economic Insider); the United States is Mexico’s largest trading partner, accounting for nearly 82 percent of the country’s exports.
The numbers don’t tell the whole story.
In my travels around rural Mexico in the last 12 years, I have passed cars with license plates from California, Texas, North Carolina, Illinois, and Florida enough times that I remember those states but I’ve seen other states too—not driven by tourists but by locals. If I stop for gas, often the attendant, guessing that I’m American, will start speaking in broken English telling me they have worked the agricultural fields in _____ (fill in the blank) California, North Carolina, New York, Florida, Texas. In small villages, you’ll see a brand new brick two-story house that, if you ask, the answer is, “That’s the Perez family; the son lives in California and sends money so they can build a house.”
Those are concrete examples of the cross-border links. Sometimes ordinary signs also reveal the commingling of our cultures; walking down the street in my hometown of Queretaro, I pass men and women wearing baseball-style caps with logos of the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers, or the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys or Pittsburgh Steelers or the New England Patriots. Sky satellite TV here carries daily games from Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association during their seasons. On the flip side, attend a Mexico-USA soccer game in the United States and the Mexican jerseys in the stands outnumber the USA shirts. The commingling has tied the two countries closer together than ever before.
Which brings me to my point. How idiotic is it that we have an immigration policy that vilifies a neighbor who actually loves the United States and its culture, and vice-versa; Americans love Mexican food and even celebrate holidays that they believe are observed in Mexico like Cinco de Mayo. For that matter, more than one-third of the United States used to be part of Mexico, and was ceded to the United States in the Mexican-American war of 1848. Why don’t we have a system in place that allows travel back and forth for Mexicans to work in the back-breaking jobs that American companies find hard to fill without them? Every serious study of Mexican immigration over the past 50 years shows that Mexicans would gladly return home to their native towns and villages if they didn’t have to suffer the fear of being detained and arrested by the Border Patrol. Moreover, what Mexican bring with them is a belief still in the American Dream, that the USA offers them an opportunity to better themselves.
Donald Trump has twice effectively killed immigration reform bills, once in 2015 when he campaigned against the bipartisan Gang of Eight Senate bill — promoted on the Republican side by Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Marco Rubio — that was languishing in the House of Representatives, and again in 2024 during the presidential campaign when another bipartisan effort was derailed in Congress, in part because of pressure from Trump, who didn’t want any progress toward immigration reform. Instead of a reformed immigration policy that would have provided roadmaps for citizenship as well as stricter border enforcement, Trump focused on a more punitive policy with strict enforcement without any other reforms and the promise of building a wall between the two nations.
That’s why I urge everyone voting in the 2026 midterms to consider the importance of changing our immigration policy. We need leaders who want to solve the problem in a mutually beneficial and constructive manner, instead of arresting and deporting people. We will never be one nation in North America. But together, with a sane immigration policy, the people of Mexico and the United States can build on our existing cultural and commercial bonds. As partners and good neighbors, we will all be stronger.
To read my original Mexico Part 1 and Part 2, here are the links:
— https://gordonmottauthor.com/2025/02/25/the-mexico-i-know-part-1/
— https://gordonmottauthor.com/2025/02/26/the-mexico-i-know-part-2/
