By Antonio Diaz
March, 2009
This past February 12th marked the 200th birthday anniversary of evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin, and much is being said and written about evolution, natural selection and the conflict between religion and science.
Among his findings, Darwin was the first to discover that when two closely related species are genetically crossed, they become larger and more vigorous. This trait, known as “hybrid vigor” is the basis for the way experts breed corn and other cereal crops today, and is also the main reason why I felt compelled to use Darwin’s views to take a look at other organic forms of life. A company can be considered an organism the same way a project has a life of its own. The same consideration can be applied to countries.
Let’s take The United States and Mexico to analyze them as two closely related species for which we know there is a potential “hybrid vigor”. This is a necessary discussion as both countries face a historic opportunity to optimize their outcome of the current economic crisis, with new paradigms and opportunities. Canada must be included too.
Before this economic crisis started hitting everybody, Mexico was just coming out of its own “bankruptcies” of the 80s and 90s having recuperated access to voluntary capital markets and a well capitalized financial system that was waking up to offer mortgage loans, working capital for PYMES and even consumer credit. But, thanks to the lack of credit of two decades, the Mexican population is not nearly as leveraged as the U.S., where the same two decades witnessed the turbocharged multi-level leveraging of the U.S. population that will now have to pay the debt that fueled the extravagant consumption that we witnessed and enjoyed (or not).
So before I continue, let me cut and paste Wikipedia’s definition of Crisis:
A crisis (plural: crises) may occur on a personal or societal level. It may be a traumatic or stressful change in a person's life, or an unstable and dangerous social situation, in political, social, economic, military affairs, or a large-scale environmental event, especially one involving an impending abrupt change. More loosely, it is a term meaning 'a testing time' or 'emergency event'
I particularly like the “testing time” and note “unstable and dangerous social situation”. I regret it does not refer to the proven fact that with crisis comes opportunity.
Editing out all my comments about the negatives of globalization (need to redefine), the positives of free trade (and the need of a strong domestic market), recession economics (and its psychological roots), unemployment (up), real estate prices (down), credit crunch (two more years to go), and deflation (before inflation), I want to focus on one single topic, which involves the main sources of change in the region, and the main elements of the organisms we are analyzing, namely human beings. Fortunately, populations have a science that helps us study them: Demographics.
Demographics are very relevant because population trends are more predictable than any of the topics I am editing out and it can help us understand reality and even try to project some future events, based on population growth, aging patterns and new births. Demographics must be at the core foundation of long-term solutions to the current crisis. The next two topics would be education and energy, then the demand driven illegal drug problem and health.
North America’s “hybrid vigor” is not about money flows, credit or GDP growth. Those are outcomes. Our vigor is about the people, where they live, what they buy, sell, save or throw away. This takes me directly to talk about migration as an intrinsic force behind our potential hybrid vigor.
The DNA of the United States includes very clear immigration policies. In fact, the country makes it a point to import great people from all over the world. Its universities, multinational companies and agricultural fields import the necessary documented or undocumented people they need to have a competitive edge.
I remember when I was a child, I heard that not only did the U.S. promote immigration from Europe before I was born, but that Canada was promoting immigration to support their evolution as a country when I was attending primary school.
The North American Hybrid Vigor has its (unnoticed) core in the Demographic trends we observe, and in the ones we promote, and no, this is not a comment to promote more Mexicans in the U.S. This is to promote more Americans in Mexico, as part of the process of evolution and the formation of new economic forces and functional communities
New migration flows are taking place. There are more than two million Americans living in Mexico already. This migration flow will continue. It can be predicted and even promoted with facilities, amenities, health solutions, great residences, excellent food and friendly domestic help (where else can you have a butler, a cook and a driver in Baja for less than a HOA monthly fee in San Diego?).
So what is Mexico’s immigration policy? How is Mexico positioning itself as the “Living Paradise” of North America? How is Mexico going to promote (documented) immigration of the retiring population of the U.S. and Canada?
Among Mexico’s global competitive advantages we must recognize that the sun, natural beauty, culture and friendship that have turbocharged the tourism industry, make Mexico a very attractive place to retire. The Mexican Government needs to orchestrate a systemic effort to promote immigration of educated, wealthy, experienced, active adults as one of its main agendas for the next twenty years. That will certainly put some real hybrid vigor into North America’s evolution.
Antonio Diaz is a dual U.S. and Mexican citizen, and CEO of San Diego-Tijuana based First Baja (www.firstbaja.com) He has a thirty year career in Business Development, Finance and Real Estate. He graduated from Universidad Anahuac (Actuarial Sciences) and is a Wharton MBA. He is a member of the Advisory Board of AMAR (Asociacion Mexicana de Asistencia al Retiro www.amar.org.mx).
