Politics & Power Quote by Tony Garza

The line sells itself as humane pragmatism, but it’s also a neat political escape hatch: shift the drama of immigration from American enforcement to Mexican governance. “Look at Mexico” signals a gaze outward, a way to frame migration less as a U.S. labor-market and policy story and more as a symptom of someone else’s failure. Garza’s core move is to recast border anxiety as an anti-corruption campaign. That’s rhetorically savvy because corruption is one of the few diagnoses that can satisfy multiple audiences at once: it flatters U.S. listeners (we’re stable; they’re broken), offers a morally legible villain, and implies a solution that doesn’t require Americans to confront their own contradictions.

The subtext is conditional empathy. People “won’t come over here” if their lives improve, which sounds compassionate, but it also positions migrants primarily as a problem to be prevented rather than humans with agency. The promised “better life” is a kind of pressure valve: fix Mexico and you can avoid messy debates about visas, asylum, workplace enforcement, and the U.S. demand for low-wage labor. It’s prevention-as-policy, and it’s attractive because it’s abstract, long-term, and conveniently offshore.

Context matters: Garza, as a U.S. political figure with Mexico expertise, speaks from the borderlands of diplomacy and domestic politics. The quote reads like a bridge between bipartisan instincts - help Mexico develop, reduce migration - while quietly aligning with a hard political incentive: making “ending corruption” in Mexico the prerequisite for easing pressure at home.