Overview of the shantytown known as Villa 31, home to some 20,000 poor Argentinians and immigrants from neighboring Paraguay and Bolivia. It is separated by train tracks and a road from the city’s richest neighborhood, Recoleta, in the center of Buenos Aires, October 19 (Enrique Marcarian/Courtesy Reuters).

Most everyone agrees that inequality matters. Studies by the World Bank, the IMF, and by academics (such as Richard Wilkinson of the University of Nottingham) demonstrate how harmful inequality can be, affecting a whole host of factors, ranging from economic growth rates to teenage pregnancy rates and crime.

Given the stakes, recent trends in Latin America have been quite positive. Using the Gini index, the most common measure of inequality (where zero represents a perfectly equal society, and one is perfectly unequal), Latin America has been one of the most unequal regions in the world, with the worst discrepancies found in Brazil, Honduras, Ecuador, Colombia, and Bolivia. But over the last decade the Gini declined in fourteen Latin American countries, led by Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Panama.

One reason is economic stability. The booms and busts of the 1980s and 1990s, which wiped out the savings of so many, have now dissipated. Another important factor has been the global demand for the region’s commodities (which range broadly from energy to foodstuffs to minerals), bringing an influx of dollars and spending. Government-run social programs too have mattered, in particular conditional cash transfer programs such as Mexico’s Oportunidades and Brazil’s Bolsa Familia that have helped improve the living situations of millions. Taken together, income for Latin America’s lower and middle classes rose much more quickly than that of the region’s economic elites, reducing inequality.

These positive trends contrast to what has been happening in the United States. Measured by the OECD, America’s Gini coefficient rose by over .04 points during the last twenty years—placing it above OECD members such as Italy and Japan, and on a more comparable level with Turkey. This growing income inequality stems not from the middle and lower classes getting poorer in absolute terms, but rather from the wealthiest 1 percent pulling away from the pack—their annual income increased 275 percent from 1979 to 2007 compared to 37 percent for those in the middle.

An interesting series by the Global Post illuminates these changes, matching up U.S. cities with their equals (in terms of inequality) around the world. For example, Ithaca, NY is on par with Peru (.46), Milwaukee, WI with Uruguay (.45), and Naples, FL with Chile (.52) (you can see more of the comparisons here). A different back of the envelope inequality measurement divides the annual income of a country’s wealthiest 20 percent of the population by the bottom 20 percent. Calculated by Adam Isacson, the United States is now more unequal than ten Latin American countries including Mexico, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

The question now is how to take on these widening gaps, given the social and aggregate economic costs. Here there is something to learn from America’s hemispheric neighbors. Economic growth alone won’t fix the problem; targeted social programs and safety nets matter. Perhaps too there is something to learn from their politics—with many nations finding their way past years of democratic legislative gridlock to create more socially inclusive policies.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

U.S. Border Patrol surveys the border fence near rancher John Ladd’s property adjacent to the Arizona-Mexico border near Naco, Arizona, March 29, 2013 (Samantha Sais/Courtesy Reuters).

As Senate immigration negotiations continue, the Council on Foreign Relations has just released a report on the effectiveness of U.S. immigration enforcement. The authors, Bryan Roberts (a senior economist at Econometrica, Inc), John Whitely (an economist focusing on resource allocation), and my colleague Edward Alden, detail the dramatic surge in border security “inputs”—personnel and money—outlining the sharp increases in the number of border patrol agents and the amount of their budgets. But the report highlights the lack of government data on “outputs” (i.e., the results of each program) and “outcomes” (how successful or unsuccessful each policy was in reducing illegal immigration).

This data gap hinders America’s ability to understand and measure the effects of an added dollar or border patrol agent, and as a result limits the ability to improve enforcement policies. Going forward, the report urges Congress to fill this vacuum, and also calls for designing models to predict illegal immigration flows, and for strengthening congressional oversight on enforcement policies (by holding quarterly hearings for relevant Senate and House committees). By collecting and disseminating information on how well specific enforcement policies worked (or did not work), scholars and policymakers would hopefully not only be better informed, but better equipped to manage illegal immigration.

It is well worth a read, and you can find the full report here.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A girl from the “Insurgentes de la Paz” (Peace Insurgents) school hangs up her school bag near an old bus turned into her classroom in the settlement of Pueblo Nuevo, Oaxaca (Stringer/Courtesy Reuters).

One of the biggest criticisms leveled at Mexico is the lack of social mobility. A new report published by Mexico City’s Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias (CEEY) takes a look at just how mobile (and immobile) Mexican society really is—revealing that there are both reasons for worry and for cautious optimism. On the bright side, there is a significant amount of mobility in Mexico’s middle three economic quartiles. In contrast, few of the richest and the poorest leave their origins behind (with a full 50 percent staying put on each end of the economic ladder).

So what matters? Education seems to be vital. Here family is paramount, both in terms of expectations and resources, leaving many stuck on the bottom rungs. This is particularly for advanced degrees, where educated parents are more likely to push their children to follow them off to college and beyond. And their children, the report shows, generally live up to these expectations.

The study also shows that attending private elementary schools matters. Here perhaps the news is getting better, and though Mexico has not yet fixed its weak public school system, private school education has expanded. Mexico now boasts some 45,000 private schools—roughly one third of all educational institutes. And while many question the quality of some of these establishments, kids attending private elementary schools were much more likely to complete their studies and attend college.

The study also shows big differences between men and women, with women being more mobile than men—for good and for bad. Still, where you come from influences expectations and outcomes, with upper class women working (and earning) more than their poorer counterparts. Parental education also plays a role. For women whose parents were well educated, roughly two-thirds were employed, compared to 44 percent whose parents had not completed primary school.

In international comparisons, Mexico falls far behind industrialized countries, such as those in the European Union. But studies are more mixed when comparing Mexico to its Latin American neighbors (depending on which measuring methods were used and during which time periods). A 2013 World Bank report found Mexico to have one of the lowest proportions of upwardly-moving social “climbers” in Latin America, but other studies that instead track individuals over several periods of time rank Mexico’s mobility at the top of the region. And a 2012 study by the Universidad de los Andes found that while overall levels of mobility were higher in Chile, intergenerational mobility was progressing much faster in Mexico than in either Chile or Colombia.

Social mobility matters not just for individuals and families but also for the broader economy. As a 2010 OECD report puts it, countries with lower levels of social mobility are more likely to “misallocate human skills and talents.” This diminishes motivation, productivity, innovation, and, in the aggregate, economic growth. So what can Mexico do? Following through and pushing further the recent education reforms, so that the vast disparity between public and private schools diminishes, is a start. The report too calls for affirmative action programs for women in schools and workplaces and for expanding the number of secondary schools and colleges. Other reforms to reduce the size of the informal sector, and to spread access to financing so that those with good ideas or companies can begin or expand their operations will also help, ensuring that the talented, motivated, and hard-working get a chance to rise.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A marijuana leaf is displayed at Canna Pi medical marijuana dispensary in Seattle, Washington, November 27, 2012 (Anthony Bolante/Courtesy Reuters).

Reading through the 2013 National Drug Control Strategy, it is not all that different from recent years past. Drug use remains a serious issue within the United States, with national trends staying fairly steady. Cocaine usage has indeed fallen (from 1 percent of the population to .5 percent), but marijuana usage rose from 6 percent to 7 percent during the same time period—helping to keep the overall monthly drug use levels stable (at over 8 percent of Americans). The biggest changes evident in the Obama administration’s drug policy are rhetorical—defining addiction as a disease, and framing drug use as a public health problem instead of as a moral failing.

But the shift in resources—to match these rhetorical changes—is more limited. As you can see in the chart below, money for prevention has increased by just over 10 percent, but spending on local law enforcement continues apace. The budget allocations are, in fact, not much different from ratios under the Bush administration—and aimed at treatment and rehabilitation (in percent of overall money) even less than 2005 levels.

2014 White House Drug Control Budget

For real dynamism, you need to look beyond the federal government and its official drug plan to the local and state levels. In 2012 Colorado and Washington voted to legalize recreational marijuana and some sixteen other states and Washington D.C. allow medical marijuana—a number that will surely grow in the coming years. This groundswell may very well spur the national government toward a more fundamental policy shift, as it is forced to grapple with the increasing disparity between the current federal policy and expressed voter wishes.

The other outside change that may directly impact U.S. drug policy is the Affordable Healthcare Act (i.e., Obamacare). In the next year it should provide over 60 million Americans with access to mental disorder and substance abuse benefits. Though not sold as such, this new benefit could indeed transform the resource scorecard within the National Drug Control Strategy, matching up better with the recent rhetoric.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

People cross from the US to Mexico at the international border station in Calexico, California, adjacent to the Mexican border town of Mexicali, November 3, 2009 (Lucy Nicholson/Courtesy Reuters).

As President Barack Obama meets today with his counterpart, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, he is navigating one of America’s broadest and most complex bilateral relationships. In this op-ed for the BBC (you can read here and below), I argue that it is important for Obama and his team to take into account the fundamental transformations that Mexico has undergone over the past thirty years—since it is these new realities that will shape both the substance and nature of U.S.-Mexico relations far into the future.

President Obama’s visit to Mexico is part of a long tradition of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and its neighbor to the south. But while many Americans feel that they understand the basic economic and social forces that drive Mexico, the realities are much more interesting. Here five myths about Mexico, that have a direct impact on American foreign policy, are debunked.

Mexico is no longer a poor country

Though many Americans think of Mexico as a country of either wealth or poverty, by most accounts it is now a middle-class country. A majority of Mexican households—incorporating roughly sixty million people—now have disposable income. Half of the people in Mexico own their own car, and one-third own a computer. Nearly everyone has a television and mobile phone.

These new urban middle-class Mexicans are also investing in their children’s education. There are now 45,000 private schools, comprising nearly a third of all Mexico’s schools. Student enrollment in universities and beyond has tripled in the past thirty years, from under a million in 1980 to almost three million today.

The rise of the middle class has affected Mexico’s politics, too, with this segment pivotal in voting out the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 2000, and then voting it back in to Los Pinos, Mexico’s White House, last year. This crucial voting bloc is increasingly up for grabs, rapidly joining the ranks of Mexico’s proclaimed political independents. They mirror the U.S. middle class in their concerns, paying close attention to economic opportunities and security, two important issues in U.S.-Mexico relations.

Mexican manufacturing doesn’t harm U.S. workers

For Mexico, the biggest issues in the U.S.-Mexico relationship are economic, and President Enrique Peña Nieto is hoping to deepen commercial ties between the two nations.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama praised Ford Motor Company for bringing jobs back from Mexico as part of a strategy to make “America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing”. Yet this statement, at least with regard to Mexico, is mistaken. It isn’t that globalization doesn’t lead some jobs to foreign lands. It does. But by expanding abroad, companies become more competitive, supporting and creating jobs at home.

Ford increased its U.S. workforce (and plans on adding thousands more jobs by 2015), but it hasn’t stopped hiring in Mexico. It is expanding a plant in Hermosillo and adding over 1,000 positions in the last few years in the state of Sonora. A study by two Harvard business professors and a University of Michigan colleague shows that for every ten people hired overseas by American corporations, two new jobs are created in the United States.

Mexican immigrants are not going to keep flooding the U.S.

The estimated numbers coming north each year are down to levels last seen in the 1970s. In fact, a 2012 Pew Hispanic Report noted that the net immigration for Mexicans in and out of the United States was “zero”. In other words the same numbers of Mexicans entered and left.

This can in part be explained by the U.S. recession, but it also reflects changes within Mexico. Mexico has undergone a major demographic shift in the last generation. In the 1970s, women were having an average of seven children, but today that number is closer to two—the same as the U.S. With fewer citizens coming of age each year relative to the overall population, the decades where Mexico’s “extra youths” headed to the U.S. are over.

Mexico’s democracy is not weakening

Although many feared that the 2012 return of the PRI would push Mexico back into its authoritarian past, checks and balances now exist and constrain whomever wears the presidential sash.

In Mexico’s Congress, the three major political parties must negotiate to get any bill passed, and the nation’s Supreme Court has increasingly exercised its autonomy to restrain both political officials and vested interests.

The country’s media and civil society groups more generally are beginning to play an important watchdog role, questioning policies and exposing bad behavior. And finally, Mexico has reached a relatively enviable space, ranking in the upper tiers of nearly all relative international measures of democracy.

Mexico is not at risk of becoming a failed state

Over the last six years, some 70,000 Mexicans have been killed in drug-related violence, and tens of thousands more have disappeared. Mexico’s police have often been unwilling or unable to stem the bloodshed, and the judicial system too has failed—with just 2 percent of all crimes ending in convictions.

But while Mexico faces a serious security threat from organized criminal groups, the country continues to collect taxes, build roads, run schools, expand social welfare programs and hold free and fair elections. Its economy has grown steadily, if somewhat slowly, and Mexico maintains an important presence in multilateral groups and summits. It has also begun the long and arduous path of professionalizing its police forces and transforming its courts to create a democratic rule of law.

One thing about Mexico that remains true is the deep and now permanent economic, political, security, and personal links between Mexico and the United States. For Presidents Obama and Peña Nieto, there is much to gain from a better understanding of each other’s country.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mexico’s President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto listens to U.S. President Barack Obama (R) in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington November 27, 2012 (Kevin Lamarque/Courtesy Reuters).

When President Obama arrives in Mexico this week he will face almost two completely different governments when it comes to discussing security and economic relations. In an op-ed that I wrote for the Dallas Morning News (you can access it here or below), I discuss these differences and what the challenges will be for the bilateral relations going forward.

President Barack Obama heads to Mexico this week to meet with his recently installed counterpart, President Enrique Peña Nieto. On the two most important issues for the U.S.-Mexico relationship — economics and security — he faces two almost different governments, made up of disparate teams, agendas and strategies. How Obama and his administration manage each of these issues and groups will shape both countries far into the future.

Though at times given shorter shrift than security and immigration, growing U.S.-Mexico economic ties have the potential to transform both nations. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement began 20 years ago, trade has quadrupled to about $500 billion a year. In this, Texas leads the rest of the nation, with some $16 billion in goods crossing the border each month, supporting nearly 500,000 jobs.

As important as the sheer amount of trade, the agreement shaped the decisions of thousands of companies, including Texas-based Dell, Pilgrim’s and Taylor Farms, companies that began making and growing things on both sides of the border to gain a competitive edge. Today, for every manufactured product “made in Mexico,” on average, 38 percent was actually made in America by U.S. workers. These links far exceed other nations — the comparison for China, Brazil and the European Union is 4 percent or less; for Canada, our other NAFTA partner, it is 25 percent. In this age of global supply chains, Mexico is by far the best partner not just for U.S. companies but also for their workers.

As Obama focuses on these ties, he will find an able and willing partner in Mexico. Peña Nieto has prioritized economic reforms above all others, with a comprehensive and ambitious agenda to change Mexico’s labor laws, education system, telecommunications and broadcasting, financial architecture, energy sector and taxes. This effort is led by an aggressive and cohesive team consisting of the finance minister, foreign minister and commerce secretary, among others. It is also a group with years of experience living in the United States, completing impressive degrees from MIT, Yale and Wharton.

Yet no less important for the two neighbors is security. Under Felipe Calderón’s administration, more than 70,000 Mexicans were killed and many more disappeared in violence related to drugs and organized crime. Regular crime, too, has risen, with 40 percent of Mexicans in a recent survey reporting that they or a family member had been a victim of a crime in the past year. This growing crisis opened the door to greater bilateral efforts. After years of cautious circling, U.S.-Mexico security cooperation — through the Mérida Initiative and other efforts — blossomed, setting the two neighbors on a different and more collaborative path.

On this policy front, the direction Peña Nieto’s government plans to take is less clear. While repeatedly promising to reduce violence, the details of his administration’s security plan remain vague — suggesting more spending on prevention and social programs. Even the concrete shifts announced — for instance, creating a new federal gendarmerie — have been clouded by contradictory explanations and timelines. The efforts to recentralize the security apparatus by bringing the autonomous Federal Police back under the control of the Ministry of Interior still await the definition of basic reporting lines and the stamp of a finally confirmed executive secretary of the national public security system charged with coordinating security efforts (an area where the previous government struggled). Finally, the leaders of this side of Peña Nieto’s government — Osorio Chong, ex-governor of Hidalgo; Manuel Mondragón y Kalb, the deputy secretary of public safety and previously Mexico City’s top cop; and Jesús Murillo Karam, Mexico’s attorney general and also an ex-governor of Hidalgo — are less familiar to the United States, and some worry less open to working with their neighbor than their predecessors.

To be fair, security is harder. After more than a decade of underperformance, most Mexicans agree on what needs to be done economically. In contrast, there is no ready security blueprint for the way forward, for what will work to make Mexico — and by extension the United States — safer. And the issues on which there is some consensus — cleaning up Mexico’s police forces and courts and expanding programs to help youths and communities at risk — were started under the Calderón administration, making it a tricky sell for a government trying to differentiate itself.

For Obama, the challenge this week will be to push forward on both fronts, recognizing and embracing the economic ambitions while also ensuring that security cooperation doesn’t falter. What really matters is what happens after the visit and how the U.S. government works with all of these elements and directions in Peña Nieto’s Cabinet. Because the outcome matters — as no other country affects the United States on a day-to-day basis as much as Mexico.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A worker carries the flags of Mexico and the U.S. during a march through the streets of Salinas, California May 1, 2006 (Robert Galbraith/Courtesy Reuters).

When President Obama travels to Mexico next week to meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, they will have no shortage of topics to talk about. This past week, I spoke with Kai Ryssdal of “Marketplace” about what their conversations on bilateral trade might cover. You can listen here.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

View of the ‘Diana Cazadora Monument’ (C) and the new ‘Torre Mayor’
skyscraper (L) on Mexico City’s elegant Reforma Avenue (Daniel Aguilar/Courtesy Reuters).

In anticipation of my talk next Tuesday in Los Angeles, I wrote the following piece for Zocalo’s Public Square:

As my plane touched down at Benito Juárez airport in early 1994, I didn’t know that it was the start of a twenty-year relationship with Mexico.

I was coming to work at a boutique investment bank, the first paying job I was offered that would allow me to live in Latin America. I wasn’t an obvious choice for the city or for the profession—a liberal arts degree holder who grew up in the rural Midwest. Still, there I was, playing international banker in this teeming city of twenty million. I dove into the hubris of it all, poring over balance sheets and building financial models to pass judgment on Mexico’s publicly traded companies. I followed global financial markets, trying to match our traders’ exuberance as they lobbed Cetes and Tesobonos, Mexico’s peso- and dollar-denominated bonds, back and forth.

Being a foreigner in Mexico in the 1990s had its advantages. My status as a novelty—both a professional woman and a foreigner—opened doors that would have remained shut for most twenty-two-year-olds elsewhere. I was able to meet the CFOs and CEOs of the companies I was covering and to attend high-powered meetings and meals. And I could pretend not to speak Spanish when pulled over for a bribe.

But my peculiarity also had its downsides. I was frequently the only professional woman in the room. I quickly learned not to wear black suits, so as not to be confused with the edecanes—the young women at meetings and conferences whose job it is to circulate microphones and coffee. Mexico’s social scene revolved around couples, forcing me to go along with some odd match-ups in order to fit in.

Then, just short of my one-year anniversary of living and working in Mexico, the peso crisis hit.

Unless you’ve lived through one, it’s hard to understand what a currency meltdown in an emerging market is like. There is nothing gradual about the erosion of hope and stability as the speculative capital heads for the exits. And the financial tsunami touches all aspects of life.

In 1995, Mexico entered one of its worst recessions on record, restaurants and shops closed seemingly overnight, and millions lost their jobs. The financial trendsetters—those with the first mortgages and car loans—were battered by interest rates that reached the triple digits. Equally devastating was a widespread sense of deception, as my Mexican colleagues and friends had believed the promises of President Carlos Salinas’ government—that this time things were different, that Mexico’s boom-and-bust cycles were a thing of the past.

The crisis gave us fortunate few paid in dollars an opportunity to use our sudden windfall (our paychecks went a lot further in pesos) to travel widely, and have the run of the country. From Playa del Carmen to San Luis Potosí, San Cristobal de las Casas to Zacatecas, Aguascalientes to Guanajuato, I crisscrossed Mexico, trying to see as much of my new home as possible.

Still, despite the country’s undeniable allure, the day-to-day grind, the sadness of so many pushed back into poverty, and the escalating crime in Mexico City made life difficult. I, like many others, was held up at gunpoint, a milestone that turned my leisurely walk across a park to work into a dreaded gauntlet, as I tried to forget the feeling of hard metal pressed against my chest. At work, I began to realize that banking was not my long-term calling. So, when offered a job in New York to cover Latin America more broadly, I jumped.

While living in the middle of the economic, social, and political turmoil, it was hard to see what was happening. It was only when I returned to live in Mexico five years later that the permanence of the shifts became apparent. Having left banking for academia, I came back as a Fulbright scholar, based at the ITAM, a private university on the edge of the cobblestoned Mexico City neighborhood of San Angel. I delved into the impacts of the economic changes that followed the crisis, particularly what the privatization of Mexico’s social security meant for financial markets, Mexico’s larger economy, and workers.

Once back in Mexico, the most immediately noticeable change was the air itself. Where smog had obscured the city’s basic contours, government regulations on factory relocation and car use meant you could finally see, even on bad pollution days, at least one block ahead.

Politics had also changed, partly in reaction to the 1995 peso crisis, which dealt a blow to the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) credibility. By 2000, Vicente Fox, Mexico’s first non-PRI president in seven decades, occupied Los Pinos, Mexico’s White House. The economy had recovered, and policy changes had put an end to the self-inflicted crises of the past. Mexico’s streetscapes also were different. On the roads, the numerous jalopies were in much shorter supply, and the previously ubiquitous Volkswagen Bug taxis had been replaced by Nissan Tsurus and Dodge Neons. U.S. retail stalwarts Walmart, Starbucks, and Office Depot occupied many of Mexico’s busiest corners, and their corporations’ annual reports attested to the rising disposable income of their Mexican clientele.

After buying an old 1994 Honda Civic from a departing journalist, my husband and I hit the roads on weekends, revisiting my favorite haunts—many now transformed by bustling new commercial centers and housing developments. The rows and rows of neatly appointed starter homes began along the main roads and disappeared over the horizon.

Not everything was rosy. Basic services—telephone and Internet—cost more than what we had paid in the United States. The divide between the “haves” and “have-nots” persisted, with grinding poverty coexisting alongside the shoots of new prosperity. And interactions with Mexico’s bureaucracy and corrupt traffic cops remained both maddening and (only in retrospect) entertaining.

Today I am a frequent visitor to Mexico, and a close watcher of U.S.-Mexico relations. The country—the vibrancy of the capital, the beauty of the smaller cities and towns, the bustle of markets, stores, and factory floors—continues to draw me. The changes in the physical landscape, the workplace, and the freer media are undeniable evidence of the transformation of Mexico over the last three decades. It’s hard not to be optimistic about the country’s future prospects when you see the roofs of the cement-block houses that fill working-class neighborhoods. Look up, and, more often than not, you will see rebar sticking out—attesting not just to the owners’ desire but their expectation that soon they will be building a second (or even third) floor.

But there is also desolation in the burnt-out buildings in Ciudad Juárez and other towns, scars attesting to the extortion and violence wrenching the country. It is hard to miss the hushed conversations and tight faces of those who lost their loved ones, either to a bullet or to the unknown. I remain frustrated by how unfair the system can be, especially to the poor and unconnected. I wonder, with so many others, why Mexico’s governments can’t seem to get things together, or to take on powerful vested interests.

Of course, I no longer have to go to Mexico to see it. Mexico is right here in the United States. Mexicans, their families and communities, once limited to a few border state outposts, now span the nation, to places such as Charlotte, North Carolina and Frankfort, Indiana. The economic links between the two countries are deeper, and visible in the vegetables on our tables, in the parts in our cars, in the care of our young and old, in the energy that powers our transportation, and in the drugs sold on our streets. Millions of U.S. jobs now depend on workers to the south, as parts move back and forth—often more than once—before the washing machine, cellphone, computer, or car is fully assembled. This movement of people, production, and goods has brought the two countries together, blurring what was once distinctly foreign and different.

Still, we struggle to understand one another.

Published in conjunction with Latin America’s Moment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A new U.S. citizen waves a U.S. national flag in front of a display of flags of the more than 40 nations represented by the more than 90 immigrants becoming U.S. citizens during a naturalization ceremony at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts (Brian Snyder/Courtesy Reuters).

For today’s ask an expert feature on cfr.org, I answered the question: “After immigration reform, how would the large and newly legal Hispanic population influence U.S. politics?” You can read my thoughts here or below.