Texas Best Lobbying Firm Study: How Americans View Mexico
The following is a digest of an article originally published at the National Journal. The Texas Lobby Group is publishing this summary as a public service to increase discourse and awareness of how our neighbor to the South is perceived. This digest is posted for other Texas lobbyists and lobbying firms, Texas government officials, and all other interested parties.
The relationship between Mexico and America is a tense one. With illegal immigration at such a high in America, this has caused an observable strain on our relationship with Mexico. There is a great divide in Americans opinions on what is acceptable in regards in immigration laws and the drug wars that pollute our borders. This has caused political tension and resentment on both sides. While polling some of these opinions, several alarming discoveries were made. It is debatable how much truth there is to these outlooks, but the opinions themselves indicate a great disparity between Mexico and The U.S.
“The negative views of Mexico appear to be almost exclusively driven by the country’s ongoing, violent fight with drug cartels and traffickers — in an open-end question, 72% cited it as the main reason for their opinion. And asked to give three words that come to mind when they think about Mexico, almost half of respondents mentioned “drugs” as one of their top-of-mind associations. The resulting word cloud shown above is a stunning visualization of how deeply the drug war has seeped into the American consciousness. Mexico’s image problem is clearly a function of bad news — among the more than half who said they had heard, read or seen something about Mexico in the past month, 81% said it was related to drug problems and cartel violence. Others cited the death of a U.S. border patrol agent, border issues in general and illegal immigration. Given the above results, it’s not surprising that 59% of Americans see Mexico more as a source of problems for the U.S., compared to only 14% who say the country is a good partner and neighbor.”
It’s quite remarkable that so many Americans first and foremost associate the word “drugs” with their closest neighbor. This is not to say that it goes without reason. The Texas/Mexico border is well known for a thriving drug cartel, and illegal immigration. It’s ideal for conditions in and opinions on Mexico to improve, so that a greater partnership can be forged. Fortunately, Mexico’s President-elect and President Obama have recently met and discussed some of the means to do so.
Read the original article here.