Chris Wilson
USFP Capstone
4/14/10
Executive Summary
Mexico in the Transnationalization of U.S. Politics: Exploring the Limited Success of
the Mexico Lobby
Some foreign and ethnic lobbies are notorious. Israel, backed by the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, has been accused by many, including prominent scholars such as John
Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, of exerting such influence as to convince U.S. policy makers
to pursue a policy that runs counter to its own interest.1 Despite Mexico’s huge diaspora
(more than thirty million people of Mexican origin in the U.S.) and its status as our third
largest trading partner, Mexico has never achieved the same recognition. The Mexico Lobby
seems to be underachieving.
It is certainly not among the most powerful. Measured by policy outcomes, the Mexican
Lobby is seen to have a moderate level of influence. Suggestive evidence from academic
literature and a survey of policy makers performed by David Paul and Rachel Anderson Paul
confirm this conclusion.2 With the exception of the period leading up to the passage of
NAFTA, the Mexican Lobby has had an important, but not exceptional presence in
Washington. This paper seeks to identify the factors that explain the level of influence
exerted by the Mexico Lobby, ultimately finding that its low level of spending and lack
of strong alliances with U.S. interest groups are the main causes of its relative
weakness.
Defining the Mexico Lobby
The subject of this study is the Mexican Lobby, meaning the actions taken by the Mexican
government to wield political power outside and in addition to traditional diplomatic
methods. This includes work with traditional Washington insiders who use their expertise
and contacts within congress and the executive to create and implement a political strategy,
but it also includes other efforts like grassroots organizing and public relations campaigns.
The Main Factors Determining the power of the Mexico Lobby
•
•
Spending: According to research done by Sunlight Foundation and Propublica, in 2008
the Mexican Government spent just $180,347 on lobbying, less than 2% of the amount
spent by the United Arab Emirates, the year’s largest spender.3 The Mexico Lobby ranks
55th out of the 93 countries that registered financial information under the Foreign Agent
Registration Act (FARA). Fifty-four countries, including small nations like Lesotho and
Palau, invested greater sums in their lobbying efforts.
Proximity of Interests: Nations that have interests similar to those of the United States
need to exert less pressure to achieve their policy objectives. U.S.-Mexico relations
encompass a broad range of topics, many of which normally fall in the sphere of
•
domestic, rather than foreign, policy. This means the Mexican Lobby seeks influence in a
field crowded with interest groups that looks very different depending on the political
climate and the issue at stake. Mexico and the U.S. share many economic interests, yet
have very different perspectives on other topics such as immigration.
Coalition Partners: An examination of FARA semi-annual report listings from the
Mexican private sector show, as one would expect, that they focus their lobbying on issues
of commercial interest.
Mexican
Three Factors Explaining the Effectiveness of
business has been a reliable, yet
the Mexico Lobby
limited partner to the Mexican
Determinant
Result
government on issues of trade and
Financial
Resources
55th most money spent
commerce, but not on other political
on lobbying by foreign
issues. Like the Mexican business
government
community, its U.S. businesses proved
Varies by issue. Many
themselves to be important partners
in common, but also
advocating the passage of NAFTA but
strong
domestic
have not worked in coalition with the Proximity of Interests
involvement (support
Mexican Government on other
and opposition) on
issues. The Mexican ethnic lobby has
most issues.
only supported the goals of Mexico
Mexican
Power:
Limited
on occasion and to a limited extent.
Businesses Ally to Mex.: On
Despite government efforts to court
economic issues
them, “Mexican Americans are more
Power: Strong
likely to support policies opposed by Coalition U.S.
Businesses
Ally to Mex.: So far only
the Mexican government than to Partners
on NAFTA
advocate for them.”
Mexican
Power: Medium-Strong
Ally to Mex.: No
Diaspora
in U.S.
The Mexico Lobby on Three Major Bilateral Initiatives
For Mexico, the three largest foreign policy initiatives that it has taken up with the United
States over the last two decades have been NAFTA, immigration reform, and assistance and
cooperation on security and the struggle against drug trafficking. On these issues, the
Mexico Lobby has earned a mixed record. The passage of NAFTA was an unqualified success
in which lobbying was integrated with a larger diplomatic strategy. Mexican efforts to
achieve immigration reform, on the other hand, have failed. Recent security cooperation, as
begun under the Merida Initiative, can be perceived as largely successful, as it represents a
significant increase in aid and cooperation, but the diagnosis must be qualified given the
persistence of violence and drug trafficking and the lack of substantial change in the U.S.
domestic approach to drug control. Mexico expended an incredible amount of money and
diplomatic manpower lobbying the United States to achieve the passage of NAFTA, spending
between twenty-five and fifty million dollars supporting NAFTA’s passage.4 Efforts since
then have been quite a bit more modest.
Source: Author’s calculations, based on data from Department of Justice, “Report of the Attorney General to the Congress of
the United States on the Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as Amended,” 1988-2008. 1993
data is from Adriana Ines Vallejo, “The Mexican Lobby in the U.S.: Evolution, Actors, and Issues,” (Master’s Thesis, Johns
Hopkins University, Washington, DC: forthcoming), Table 3.5
Mexico’s Lobbying and Legislative Results on NAFTA, Immigration, and Security
Issue
Years as Focus
Lobbying
Outcome
NAFTA Passage and
Implementation
1990-1993 (passage)
1994-present
(implementation)
2001
Large, comprehensive
strategy, well funded
Passage of NAFTA in
1993, successfully but
not fully implemented
No reform
Immigration Reform
Drug and
Cooperation
Security
2006-present
Moderate, much of it
came too late
Limited to moderate
Passage of Merida
Initiative funding in
2008
NAFTA’s negotiations did more than simply occupy the U.S.-Mexico agenda for a number of
years before its passage in 1993, its “negotiations transformed the structure of Mexican
representation in the United States and its mode of operation,” and represented what was
the “largest foreign lobbying campaign in the United States.” 6 In the case of NAFTA, Mexico
sought to deploy all of its resources in the pursuit of a focused goal, and significant efforts
were made to build coalitions with Mexican business, U.S. businesses, and the Mexican
American community. Each yielded some results, and while its efforts to court the Mexican
American community proved much less fruitful than Mexico had hoped, the U.S. business
community, through its organizing body USA*NAFTA, proved to be a significant ally. As
much money was spent, and in spite of criticisms by some that the effort amounted to
overkill, “expenditures [were] still paled by what [was] actually at stake.”7
In January of 2001, at the beginning of President Bush’s first term and a year into the
presidency of Vicente Fox, the time seemed ripe to take on the next big issue on the bilateral
agenda: immigration. Foreign minister Jorge Castañeda was a key designer of the strategy to
negotiate immigration reform and made a conscious effort to replicate the approach, a
negotiated bilateral agreement, which President Salinas had used with NAFTA. Castañeda
and Fox, however, did not exert significant efforts on lobbying or coalition building within
the United States before the talks began. The 2001 effort failed. Immigration reform is
difficult issue to tackle in the U.S., but the absence of a lobbying strategy is incredible,
especially given that Congress sees immigration as a domestic topic fully under its control.8
Department of Justice reports show that in 2001, the year the bilateral agreement on
immigration reform was being negotiated, only $157,500 was spent lobbying the issue.9 Just
a few years after Mexico’s enormous and successful lobbying campaign to pass NAFTA, the
Mexico lobby seemed to have forgotten its lessons.
Shortly after he took office, President Calderón made the fight against drug trafficking his
top issue, deploying 27,000 soldiers to fight the criminal organizations.10 The following year,
after proposing the plan to President Bush, the two announced the Merida Initiative, a
security cooperation plan and aid package to combat drug trafficking.11 In 2006 and 2007, a
limited amount of lobbying was done in relation to the initiative, but the effort was mainly
pursued through traditional diplomatic channels. Lobbying on the issue reached its high
point in 2007, much more aptly timed than immigration lobbying, with a modest $1.3 million
in contracts that related to security and the Merida Initiative.12 “While U.S. financial aid is
impressive, it is a trickle compared with the massive assistance Washington gave Colombia
— about $700 million a year for five years — to help fight its drug war,” said Mauricio
Cardenas of the Brookings Institution.13 Given Congress’s control of the purse strings,
perhaps a larger lobbying effort would be advisable.
Looking Forward
Mexico is a middle tier foreign lobby with a mixed legislative record. It was at its largest and
strongest during the campaign to pass NAFTA, but has since significantly declined in size and
influence. It has attempted and sometimes achieved success in forming coalitions with
influential groups, but these, again, have declined since the passage of NAFTA. While Mexico
shares many interests with the United States, especially in the realms of economics and
security, it also faces strong domestic opposition on much of the agenda. Mexico could,
however, wield more power than it does. Mexico, for the size of the country and the extent
of its social, political, and economic ties to the United States, spends very small amount of
money on its lobbying efforts. Perhaps more than any other factor, Mexico could easily
change this. While more difficult, Mexico could also invest more energy into developing
coalition partners. Ultimately, the key to making these efforts pay off is strategy. Mexico
needs more robust lobbying and coalition building, but it needs to incorporate these into its
overall diplomatic strategy. It makes sense for lobbying on minor commercial and
agricultural issues to be ongoing, and the same is true for basic public relations work. But,
on major initiatives, one should find a spike in lobbying activities before and during the
preliminary stages of diplomatic negotiations so that the expertise they tap into can be used
to both articulate and implement Mexico’s strategy. Of course, Mexico will never have its
own Israel Lobby. The lack of naturally shared interests between Mexico and its diaspora
and the intermestic quality of the bilateral agenda preclude this, but the Mexico Lobby has
not always been so small. NAFTA could serve as a model for future lobbying efforts.
Notes
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby,” London Review of Books 28 no. 6 (2006): 3-12.
According to the survey, the Mexican ethnic lobby (as opposed to the Mexican foreign lobby) is the 11th most
powerful ethnic lobby in the United States. It received an average score of 44.8 on a hundred-point scale, much
less than the Israeli and Cuban lobbies, which received scores of 81.7 and 65.8 respectively. David M Paul and
Rachel Anderson Paul, Ethnic Lobbies and US Foreign Policy (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009), Table
5.1, 137.
3 The Sunlight Foundation/Propublica project uses a very conservative methodology and narrow definition of
lobbying, which accounts for the discrepancy between their results and those of the author. Their results are
important because they offer a comparison to many other foreign lobbies. Sunlight Foundation (Washington,
DC), email message to author, February 24, 2010.
4 Although various figures are used, this range seems a reasonable figure as most other estimates fall within its
bounds. K.L. Billingsley, “Mexico Rallies Against Initiative; Meddling Alarms Many in California,” Washington
Times, November 2, 1994, A1.
5 The expenditures displayed are all non-tourism related government activities registered in under FARA. This
includes things like public relations and legal representation in addition to more traditional lobbying. There is
no data for 1992 or 1994, as the DOJ did not send reports to Congress covering those years. The methodology
used to collect the data by Ines Vallejo is very similar to that used by the author, but there are some minor
differences regarding the inclusion of government-owned corporations such as PEMEX and ESSA. Overall, our
methods produce very similar results and including her 1993 figure should not skew the figures significantly.
6 Dominguez, Jorge, and Rafael Fernández de Castro, United States and Mexico: Between Partnership and Conflict,
(New York: Routledge, 2009), 126. Center for Public Integrity website,
http://www.publicintegrity.org/about/our_work/reports/, referring to The Center for Public Integrity, The
Trading Game: Inside Lobbying for the North American Free Trade Agreement (Washington, DC: The Center for
Public Integrity, 1993).
7 Todd A. Eisenstadt, “The Rise of the Mexico Lobby in Washinton: Even Further from God, and Even Closer to
the United States,” In Bridging the Border: Transforming Mexico-U.S. Relations, edited by de la Garza, Rodolfo O.
and Jesús Velasco, (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), 114.
8 Susan Martin, Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration, in an interview with Liliana
Ferrer Silva, “Cabildeo en Estados Unidos: retos y oportunidades para México,” Revista Mexicana de Política
Exterior, 84, October 2008, 17.
9 Author’s calculations, based on data from Department of Justice, “Report of the Attorney General to the
Congress of the United States on the Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as
Amended,” 2000-2002 editions.
10 Jorge Dominguez and Rafael Fernández de Castro, United States and Mexico: Between Partnership and Conflict
(New York: Routledge, 2009), 167.
11 Colleen W. Cook and Clare Ribando Seelke, “Merida Initiative: Proposed U.S. Anticrime and Counterdrug
Assistance for Mexico and Central America,” Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress (July 7,
2008).
12 Department of Justice, “Report of the Attorney General to the Congress of the United States on the
Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as Amended,” 2007 editions.
13
Mauricio Cardenas, quoted in Jaime Tarabay, “Pressure Rises For More U.S. Aid In Mexico’s Drug War,” NPR,
March 16, 2010, http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/mar/16/pressure-rises-more-us-aid-mexicos-drug-war/.
1
2