News cycles operate at such speed in the United States that last week’s lies and offensive remarks are quickly replaced by new falsehoods and insults, leaving no time and no incentive for most media to follow up on the old ones. That’s a shame, because the bright side of leaders saying really ignorant things is that if there were a follow up story, we could use the remarks as a jumping off point for education and enlightenment. As a reminder, this is what Senator John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana said on May 10th at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Hearing.

“Without the people of America, Mexico, figuratively speaking, would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback.”

Whether the Senator apologized hardly matters. More important is that good people here in the U.S. who don’t wish to live in the ignorance that Senator John Neely Kennedy  does, should get a chance to know some facts about Mexico that the Senator doesn’t. Every blunder of this sort from those who are supposed to be smarter, and somehow qualified to represent the masses is only worth the trouble if we use it to our advantage and gain understanding from it.

Therefore, here are some facts about Mexico that reveal the extent of Mr. Neely Kennedy’s ignorance.

Mexico invests in its infrastructure

Mexico has been building a 650 mile long train system over the past three years, known as the Tren Maya, that is expected to be completed in December 2023. The train cars are being built in Mexico and will be a combination of electric powered and hybrid and will transport passengers and cargo. The construction of this rail system has created tens of thousands of jobs and continues to create jobs outside of the rail system in tourism and business in the areas through which the train will run. Compare this to the U.S., where there is zero political will at the top to improve our decaying railroad system and no administration in the past 50 years has invested in rail despite that the public strongly favors the development of high speed rail and general improvements to our railroads. The construction is also creating a lot of archeological and historic preservation activities in a nation known for the rich scientific and cultural contributions of its ancestors, the Maya people. Thousands of objects of archeological and historic value have been found and cataloged during the construction of the train, which in turn will generate more tourism, especially from close neighbors like the United States.

Mexico is paving rural roads previously neglected by past government administrations with the cooperation of local artists, a project that is going to cut down on travel time for small merchants between small towns and make it easier for tourists to visit rural Mexico. A total of about 10,500 miles of highways and rural roads have been constructed and/or modernized in the four years that Mr. López Obrador has been President.

Mexico is in the process of creating a system of banks that will keep fees to a minimum, including transfer fees on sending money from the U.S. to Mexico, so that millions of low-income and rural Mexicans will be able to use a bank, some for the first time. Almost three million Mexicans who previously did not have bank accounts have opened accounts at the national Banco del Bienestar since it was created in 2020. New branches are being constructed throughout Mexico to ensure people can get to a bank even in rural towns.

Mexico’s health indicators and policies indicate better health than the United States 

36.2 percent of Americans are obese (one in three young adults are too heavy to serve in the U.S. military). In Mexico, their obesity rate is 29 percent. We are fatter than Mexico. Life expectancy in Mexico is increasing each year and is currently at 75.4 years. While the U.S. is higher at 76.4 years, our life expectancy has decreased. Mexico is taking steps to reduce the importation of genetically engineered corn to Mexico in an effort to improve the health of its people (Canada and the U.S. are objecting, no surprise there). Mexico has banned the use of glyphosate–which is a probable carcinogen as per the WHO and tons of lawsuits–on its crops, while the United States continues to allow it (some U.S. cities have banned it).

The fertility rate of Mexican women is 2.1 births per woman. The fertility rate of U.S. women is 1.7 and we are below replacement rate, which brings burden on retirement systems and general social decline as people age and there is no one to care for them.

Despite the U.S. being wealthier than Mexico, Mexico invests more of its money in social welfare protections for its citizens than the U.S. does.

A universal pension program for Mexico’s senior citizens started by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador now distributes a recurring pension to 11 million senior citizens there who previously had no social security. Another pension for people with disabilities enrolled 1.2 million beneficiaries in June of 2023 alone. Mexico has a national job training program for young adults 18 to 29 years old, “Youth Building the Future,” that currently enrolls 283,000 participants. An agricultural program, “Sembrando Vida” started by Mr. López Obrador has created permanent agricultural jobs for 455,000 Mexicans, and these workers collectively have planted 700 million trees including fruit trees, plants, vegetables, and other crops, as well as 548 million  plants in community greenhouses, thereby improving the food supply of the nation and possibly helping to keep food prices down.

When you add together the 283,000 Mexicans who work in the Youth Building the Future program and the 455,000 Mexicans who have permanent agricultural employment through Sembrando Vida, you have about 750,000 people who will not become migrants to the U.S. because they don’t need to. Yet Senator Neely Kennedy doesn’t know about it, though the information is publicly available. It seems obvious that all of López Obrador’s efforts combined do a lot on their own to drive down illegal migration to the United States from Mexico. People engaged in purposeful employment and whose senior and disabled family members have pensions will not be driven to engage in drug trade or other dangerous things people turn to for money.

Perhaps the Senator also doesn’t know that in 2021, President López Obrador informed President Joe Biden of the positive results Mexico was having with these investments in the people of rural Mexico, and asked Mr. Biden to invest $4 billion in Central American nations south of Mexico (where the majority of migrants now come from) and that Mexico would help those nations duplicate its programs there–so that Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Nicaraguans could stay put in their own nations being employed in similar projects. The Biden administration still has not done it. $4 billion would be a far better use of funds to stop migration than the current strategy of just monitoring borders and bussing migrants to certain states. As a point of comparison, just New York City alone anticipates it will spend $1.4 billion in Fiscal 2023 and $2.9 billion in Fiscal 2024 to care for the asylum seeker population.

Spend $4 billion once to stop migration at the source and improve Central Americans’s lives, or have dozens of big U.S. cities spend $4 billion each every two years? Anyone who can do 4th grade math could tell you which makes more sense, yet the Biden administration seems to have chosen the least sensible option and its critics like Senator Kennedy only propose hair-brained costly solutions like building giant walls and sending in the military.

Mexico has seized 3400 kilos of fentanyl without our help in 2021 and 2022

Despite Mr. Kennedy’s statement in the May 10th hearing, questioning whether Mexico has “the will” to “fight the cartels” in 2022 Mexico seized 1400 kilos of fentanyl; in 2021 it seized 2000 kilos; and it has destroyed 19 clandestine fentanyl facilities in Mexico since 2018. The previous Mexican President, the one the U.S. liked better because he wasn’t “a socialist,” seized ZERO kilos of the drug Mr. Kennedy is outraged about.

Mexico is competing quite well with its self-important neighbor with the bombastic but ill-informed senator. It is building exciting infrastructure, while the U.S. invests less in its infrastructure than any developed nation; Mexico is not as fat as the U.S.; it has a healthier fertility rate; and its people are benefiting from well-planned social and economic programs that have brought a small but stable income to the elderly, to people with disabilities, and to low-income youth. If the behavior of Americans is any indication, two million Americans now live permanently in Mexico, with no plans to return to the nation with the big G.D.P. If anyone’s eating cat food behind an outback, it’s not Mexicans.