>>Chrystia Freeland: I'm really delighted
that President Vicente Fox of Mexico is here.
Please join me. President Fox, if you'll sit
here.
[Applause]
>>Chrystia Freeland: Please sit down.
And Professor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, who
is an expert in globalization, immigration,
policy, and education, and who is now professor
at New York University.
President Fox, people like to say that people
need no introduction. It's actually true in
this case.
As you all know, he was a ground-breaking
iconoclastic leader of Mexico, both in Mexican
politics, the first opposition leader to be
elected since 1920, and incredibly important
in -- as well as domestic politics, in reshaping
the North American continent and in reshaping
Mexico's position in our continent.
He has a lot in common with this audience
as well because he is -- prior to his political
career he had a very glittering business career.
I see Beatriz nodding because he is from the
Coca-Cola family. He was the head of Coca-Cola
in Mexico and Latin America, so he speaks
from that experience too.
And I am particularly thrilled to have President
Fox here because I think an elephant in the
room in our whole conversations over the past
two days really has been the fact that we
are here in Arizona.
And some of the Google organizers said to
me -- Google being a company that likes to
say they do no evil, some of the organizers
said to me that there was pushback from within
Google and people said, "Why are we going
to Arizona? These people are doing bad things."
President Fox has been quite outspoken -- I
think very bravely -- about his views of Arizona's
new immigration laws, and I'd like to ask
you to start there, President Fox.
What do you think the impact of these laws
is, and what have they done in terms of how
the United States is seen in Mexico?
>>Vicente Fox: Uh-huh. Okay. Thank you. Thank
you very much for the invitation.
Let me just briefly say that my life has been
like a football game with four quarters. One
was as a student. Then the second quarter
was with this marvelous global corporation,
the Coca-Cola company, where I started as
a route salesman and in 10 years I resigned
to move to a family business, being president
for all of Latin America.
Then I was in the family business for a quarter,
another 15 years, and enjoyed the difficulties,
the struggling every day to raise for the
payroll on next Friday. It's pretty difficult
to run small businesses.
Then I moved to my third quarter, which is
moving to politics, into the public sector.
But coming to the case of migration, I think
it's -- it's a debate that is totally mis-sighted
here in the States, misguided, most of it
coming from that very sad day of September
11th where fear spread out in this nation
and fear has been guiding decisions.
Fear has made to take the decision of building
a wall when we should be building bridges,
to isolate in a way from the rest of the world
when the world is more open than ever, and
so that's a key ingredient, in the case of
migration.
Migration is an asset to any nation. My grandfather
migrated from Cincinnati, Ohio, down into
Mexico as a migrant without a penny in his
pocket. He crossed deserts, mountains, rivers,
borders, and he settled in Guanajuato in Mexico,
and there he found his American dream.
So migration is a two-way street.
[Laughter]
And when I see this great nation, which I
feel part of because of my grandfather, I
don't see why this change in leadership, this
change in going on the vanguard and challenging
the world for openness, for growth, for equal
opportunities to everybody. It now has backed
up to enclose within itself.
I think that the decision that has been taken
in Arizona is totally wrong, mis-sighted,
because the first one that is going to pay
the price for that move is the same state
of Arizona.
They have forgotten that Mexico is a partner,
that we buy from this nation more products
and services than what Italy, Germany, France,
and Britain do together.
We account for hundreds of thousands -- maybe
millions -- of jobs for U.S. citizens because
of the imports we make into Mexico.
As partners, we're building prosperity, we're
building competitiveness to our nations, we
are protecting our jobs from the challenge
coming from Asia, from China, from India,
and we have to understand that we are partners
and that as partners we can build a much better
future.
And finally, the human side just mentioned
by Howard. I think the human side is a key
ingredient in this issue as well as in many
others.
Many others has the same corporations that
work globally, and that they should, as we
are proposing now, together with Georgetown
University and the Gallup Corporation, that
by the side of each CEO, chief executive officer,
should be a CCO, a chief cultural officer,
working not on the markets but on the human
side of development, working on ecology and
protection of natural resources, working with
the community, working to build up successful
communities, successful societies, successful
citizens all over the world.
So again, I think that we should be building
bridges between our two great nations instead
of dividing through building walls. Which,
by the way, those walls are being built by
Mexicans also.
[Laughter]
>>Chrystia Freeland: So you've just mentioned
business, President Fox, and when I talk to
American business leaders, in general they're
very pro-immigration.
Do you think that they have done a good enough
job about raising their voices in the American
political debate?
>>Vicente Fox: Well, here we are -- and I'm
highly impressed of having come to this meeting
to see this vanguard of talent, of brains,
of audacity, of innovation as you all are.
But we pretty frequently forget that human
beings do their best in a scenario of peace,
of prosperity, of humanity, scenarios of stability,
and that's where we do our best. And that's
what, at Centro Fox, we are doing. Trying
to build that kind of economies, that kind
of nations, that kind of societies where we
human beings can do what we are discussing
here. And governments really need to think
about this and really need to think to the
future and make sure that they build this
kind of scenarios so that the whole world
can move forward.
>>Chrystia Freeland: I'd like to bring our
friend, Marcelo, into the conversation.
So Marcelo, you have studied immigration policy
over time. How does the debate right now fit
into the American historical context? Is this
 -- are people angrier about immigration now
than they were in the fast?
>>Marcelo Suárez-Orozco: First of all, I'm
delighted to be here and to be a part of the
conversation, and especially delighted to
share the platform with President Fox.
As the president was speaking, I was reminded
of the beautiful first line in "Anna Karenina,"
"All families are happy the same way."
But when it comes to immigration, all of the
families of the post-industrial world are
unhappy the same way because we are caught
 --
>>Chrystia Freeland: And what about Canada,
my country?
>>Marcelo Suárez-Orozco: I'm going to Toronto
next week to do some cultural therapy for
the things that are not working in Canada
also.
Canada does very, very well when it comes
to immigration.
But we're caught with an essential ambivalence.
You ask how is what's going on today different
from what happened in American history maybe
a hundred, a hundred and fifty years ago,
when, in the lower east side of Manhattan,
a massive wave of migration, a wave of migration
that is greater than today's migration wave,
was fundamentally transforming the nation.
That wave of migration created great anxieties,
great concerns.
We love immigration, looking backwards. We
love to narrate the stories of our ancestors
who, against fantastic odds, came to emerge
as engaged citizens who really built our country.
In the here and now, immigration has always
generated pushback.
A hundred years -- a hundred years ago, it
was -- there were deep anxieties, deep concerns
over whether Eastern Europeans could be integrated
into American society, whether the Irish and
the Italians could become members of a family
that had been founded by earlier waves of
English Protestant immigrants. Today --
Again, serious anti-Semitism, serious anti-Catholic
sentiment was at the very, very center.
Today --
>>Chrystia Freeland: Do you think that's comparable
to the attitude towards Muslims today?
>>Marcelo Suárez-Orozco: Well, I think 9/11
changed everything, and it's important not
to make facile historical analogies that really
don't work.
The point that I do want to make is that in
the --
>>Chrystia Freeland: That's elegant, isn't
it. He skated around there very well.
>>Marcelo Suárez-Orozco: In the United States
Supreme Court today, there are no Protestants.
All members of the Supreme Court today are
the descendants of those Catholics and those
Jews that were once imagined as unassimilable,
as an impossible group to bring into the family
of the nation.
Looking backward, all of this becomes very
obvious, very ridiculous.
What's important to think in the 21st century
is how the story of immigration has become
the human face of a global interconnected
world. You can't have integrated economies,
you can't have integrated communications,
you can't have integrated technologies, without
having integrated demographies.
And this is what every country today in the
high-income world is experiencing. Very, very
profound transformations moving forward as
a function of the dynamics that the global
integration of our economies and societies
is generating. Tremendous demographic changes.
>>Chrystia Freeland: There's one important
fact, though, and one big difference from
this previous big wave of immigration that
you're talking about.
I sometimes find myself on talk shows talking
about this and one of the people I'm sometimes
on talk shows with is Pat Buchanan, and one
of the lines that he likes to bring up is
he says, "These people all broke the law.
These are 11 million law breakers who are
here, and surely we as a country have the
right to enforce our laws."
What's the answer to that?
Can you just say, "Well, it's like an interconnected
global economy"?
>>Marcelo Suárez-Orozco: Well, I think that
we're less than 5% of the global population
today. We probably have roughly 20% of all
unauthorized immigrants worldwide.
This clearly does not work.
>>Chrystia Freeland: "We" the United States?
>>Marcelo Suárez-Orozco: The United States.
Less than 5% of the world's population today
has probably about 20% of all illegal immigrants
on earth.
This is clearly not working.
It doesn't work for the 5 million children
who woke up this morning in our country. Four
million of these children are citizen children.
Still, we may one day change the Fourteenth
Amendment -- that's not likely to happen soon
 -- but we have 4 million children, citizen
children, who get up, get into buses, go to
schools, and they don't know what will happen
to their parents. They don't know if their
parents are going to be there, are going to
be deported.
Last year, the United States deported 395,000
people to countries like Mexico, but throughout
the world, so --
>>Chrystia Freeland: You wrote that very nice
article about the girl in the school visited
by Mrs. Obama.
>>Marcelo Suárez-Orozco: Correct. Yes. So
here we have an example of a citizen child
asking the First Lady, "Well, my mommy's afraid.
You know, she doesn't know when she's going
to get deported or what's going to happen
to her."
So clearly nobody is for illegal immigration.
Illegal immigration hurts the families. Illegal
immigration cheapens the value of citizenship.
Illegal immigration bares the emperor. It
performs all of the frustrations we have with
a governmental architecture that is not working.
>>Vicente Fox: Yes. I fully agree with that,
and that's why the call is for Congress because
we're talking a federal issue here, and the
way that issue has been sitting dormant at
the U.S. Congress has permitted different
states to come up with different regulations
or different laws, which really is because
of the empty space that has been left out
by federal government.
But more so, let me tell you a concept here
that I listened to Colin Powell very recently
at the Bohemian Grove in San Francisco, California.
>>Chrystia Freeland: Are you allowed to tell
us what happened at the Bohemian Grove?
>>Vicente Fox: Of course. What he said is
this nation is mis-sighted. And it's not doing
the work it should be doing when it's not
letting minorities come into schools. Minorities
have open opportunities equal to anybody else
because he says 25 years from now, minorities
will be majorities in this nation. They're
going to be running this nation. And how come
you deprive them from going to school or this
society is not worried enough to prepare them
for that future that is coming. The statistics
and the population figures showed that pretty
soon we'll have in California a Mexican Governor.
We might be getting back part of our territory.
No!
[ Laughter ]
>>Chrystia Freeland: See, he was just checking
if you're listening. I'm going to ask President
Fox one more question. And, please, you have
a chance to ask him one question. This is
an historic opportunity to ask an historic
leader something. So I want a little more
energy than we had with Howard. I know Howard
was sort of melancholy. It was hard to interrogate
him. But please come on.
And I'm going to ask a quick question while
people get up their nerve, innovative Googlers
that you are.
The follow-up is what about Mexico's responsibility
in all of this? There's obviously been a lot
of overheated rhetoric here.
>>Vicente Fox: Total.
>>Chrystia Freeland: A lot coming out of Arizona
is Mexican drug violence being exported into
the United States.
>>Vicente Fox: Total responsibility. There
is no obligation to this nation to act different
than what it's been doing. That's why I'm
calling this mis-sighted. It's not treating
fair your partner. It's not seeing at the
future of how your economy will be competitive.
It's not looking at who is going to be harvesting
the apples in Washington State, who is going
to be harvesting the agricultural fields of
California, who is going to be building the
buildings in Las Vegas or anywhere else.
So it's just a way to see this and an invitation
to use talent, to use intelligence, like leaders
do, like you use. And, by the way, at Centro
Fox, we understand leadership as something
that every single human being has within.
We're all leaders. We're leaders all the time
of our life. And we're leaders in any activity
that we choose to work upon in our lives.
The big problem most everywhere is that many
of us don't go within ourselves, don't learn
about our leadership, don't learn about our
capacities and do not commit ourselves. So
you don't create leaders. We're all leaders.
What you do is to facilitate that everybody
makes this exercise and come up without a
strong passionate, compassionate leadership
and big aspirations for heroic goals. That's
what we should all do. Like that big graph.
That's as far, and maybe not even that far,
that every single human being can reach if
you only discover your leadership, if you
only are aware of the power that we all have
within.
And renewal, renewal, which we've been hearing
all this magnificent stories here, Deepak
Chopra puts it very simple. Gift yourself
with five minutes of reflection every day.
And then maybe you don't need the call of
cancer that they have; maybe you don't need
the September 11th to react with your own
corporation and with your own humanity. If
you commence every day on this new beginning
and you work new ideas to the future, you
can every day be doing better things, great
things, heroic things.
>>Chrystia Freeland: Okay. let's hear from
some of the leaders here with their questions.
Please?
>>> Thank you very much. I am an Austrian
citizen, and I live in Mexico, immigrated
there. And I just wanted to say I'm very happy
that there are no walls on any border, otherwise
I would not be there.
My question is what do you think, Presidente
Fox, what the trigger the drug war in Mexico?
And how long do the citizens have to wait
until this is going to be -- come to an -- not
to an end but to a livable situation?
>>Vicente Fox: Well, with all respect, we
in Mexico just happen to be in between the
huge, the mammoth U.S. market of drug consumption.
And the countries that produce it down south
 -- the Venezuelas, the Colombias, the Bolivias.
And we're paying the price, because one president
whose name is Felipe Calderone decided he
must cut the supply of drugs to this nation
and that he must cut the supply of drugs to
our youth in Mexico. And they were in this
war that is not our drugs. Our war. Because
the money to nourish that war is coming from
this market, this huge consumer market, billions
of U.S. dollars come down south every year.
And the weapons, the ammunition, each and
every one of those comes from this nation
down to Mexico.
>>Chrystia Freeland: So what's the answer?
Do drugs have to be legalized?
>>Vicente Fox: It's a joint responsibility.
We have to work together. That's why I'm totally
for depenalizing not only drug consumption
but drug production, drug distribution, and
the selling of drugs. I think that we must
 --
>>Chrystia Freeland: Decriminalizing? Legalizing?
>>Vicente Fox: Yes.
>> Chrystia Freeland: How far? Legalizing?
>>Vicente Fox: Yes. Total. Absolutely total.
At the very end it's our own responsibility
of the users, of the consumers. I mean, you
don't limit the consumer to get Coca-Cola
because it has caffeine. Just give them the
Coke.
>>Chrystia Freeland: That's going to be the
headline, Beatriz. Coca-Cola is the same as
drugs and should be legal.
>>Vicente Fox: The nations that have taken
this step have suffered no increase in drug
consumption like Holland. This nation, when
it finally ended up the prohibition back in
the '20s of last century, you ended up with
the couples and with the crime that extended
the in the area of Chicago.
So prohibitions don't work. At the very end
it's the consumer. It is the user of drugs
that has to react, has to protect his own
health, has to be pretty aware of the harm
that he's doing to himself. And the family
education and the school system education.
Imagine a world where you have drugs that
are depenalized and that are legal and that
you tax them with that 1,000% over and above
the price cost. Then you're on a market. The
money you can raise there it will be more
than enough to reduce drug consumption, like
societies in this nation or in Mexico have
been able to reduce smoking and liberated
many, many people that were to die.
In the case of Mexico, there is not more than
1,000 people that die from overdoses. And
this war has cost in the last four years 28,000
people killed. Or, if we take cigarettes or
we take alcohol, it's tens of thousands of
people that die for that. Why is a nation
paying such a high cost on tourism, on investment,
on talent that is leaving the country to protect
that 1,000? I mean, let's leave it to them
to decide whether they would consume or not.
And, finally, I would take out the Army, bring
it back to the headquarters and use police
instead. Because there's a lot of problems
with the presence of the Army on the streets.
A lot of human rights violations. A lot of
nondue judicially process that every citizen
deserves. So we must do some changes. We must
think like the guys that passed through this
stage this morning, innovation, new ideas,
new ways to confront this problem. We have
to think laterally and go beyond this war
that we're faced with right now.
>>Chrystia Freeland: Okay. Well, our time
has come to an end. We've had a red light
for a few minutes. But I introduced President
Fox as an innovative and iconoclastic leader.
And I think he has certainly lived up to that
billing in the conversation here.
Thank you very, very much. And thank you very
much, Marcelo, for helping us to understand
in a broader context these very heated issues.
Great pleasure. Thank you very much.
