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). Read more »

I had an interesting conversation with Jorge Ramos and Jesus Esquivel, author of La DEA en México, this weekend on Al Punto. You can watch it here.

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). Read more »

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. Read more »

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 (that 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. Read more »

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. Read more »

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.

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. Read more »

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. Read more »

On Sunday some fifteen million Venezuelans headed to the polls to choose between Nicolás Maduro (Chávez’s heir apparent) and Henrique Capriles (the opposition’s leader). In an election many expected to be a sweep for Maduro, official tallies showed Capriles falling short by less than 300,000 votes (1.6 percent of the total). Though it now seems unlikely that an electoral apparatus firmly in the hands of Chavistas will allow a recount or overturn the results, this doesn’t necessarily mean the end of Venezuela’s democracy. And having Maduro at the helm in the coming months and years should complicate the legacy of Chavismo, helping Venezuela’s opposition in the medium to long term. Read more »